My Effect: Divergence
by Lanilen
Summary: Has your sense of direction ever gotten you into trouble? Mine's so bad that it's capable of breaking the laws of physics. Once, I went for a walk in New Zealand in 2014, and ended up on Mindoir during a batarian raid in 2170. Where I met someone.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **Welcome to my sparkling brand-new fanfic, one of two, featuring... me! I finally bit the bullet and decided to go for the obligatory self-insert that seems to be so popular in the Mass Effect fandom. Featuring action, drama, and a pretty large divergence from canon – hence the title.

I've actually been thinking about this for a while, and I came up with two very different ideas, one of them following the canon – the usual "follow along the games plot" type, only with a few twists of my own – and another being this one, where things start _way_ earlier than in the games, and I plan to have a _lot _of changes instead.

So, given that I couldn't make up my mind, I decided to do both, because why the heck not? It may or may not have something to do with my ego being so big that it needs more than one fic to contain it.

Anyway, if starting on Mindoir, 2170 is your thing, keep reading! If you're thinking more "I want to just follow the game", please check my other self-insert: "My Effect: Convergence". I will be updating both, together with 49,993 – my refusal ending fic.

I know, way too much on the plate. Well, it may be for the best, I find that breaking between fics helps a lot with writer's block and getting fresh ideas in.

One of the things you may notice in this fic is a number of references to what is, in my humble opinion, the _best_ Mass Effect fanwork on this site: "Cause and Effect", and its sequels, "Mass Effect: Newton's First Law" and "Mass Effect: Newton's Second Law", by Raven Studios. You'll easily find them if you search the site, or check my list of favourites. They have, again in my humble opinion, the _best_ characterization work I've read on FFnet.

So yeah, there'll be references to it during this fic. I strongly recommend you check them out.

With all that out of the way, let's get this show on the road!

* * *

><p>Have you ever been to New Zealand? It has a well deserved reputation for being very pretty, and full of unspoiled nature. Of course, that's a bit of a stretch, because most of the countryside is fenced in – and covered in sheep. That's not something they tell you in the tourist guides.<p>

For me it wasn't about pretty sights. I came here without two pennies to rub together, having managed to score a grant to study agricultural engineering and, more important, start over by myself. Really far away from everything. And slowly, I was putting a life together here.

Though I admit, the countryside was quite nice.

It was the third day of my hike. A mere nine miles going through Mackinnon Pass to get to the lodge, going up a thousand feet before coming down again. And it was just awesome. I hadn't seen a soul since I took off – not surprising, given the season – and the views from up there were nothing short of spectacular. Want to get away from absolutely anything and everything? Do the Milford Track walk.

At the end of the day I had arrived at the bottom, and the views had disappeared behind a dense screen of trees. It wouldn't be long before I got to the lodge. Assuming I could find it, that is, because the track was surprisingly bad there – and it had nothing to do with my dreadful sense of direction; nuh-huh, not at all. I wondered whether I had taken a bad turn somewhere (again), tracks in this country are always well marked...

My answer was waiting for me past the last edge of the forest. I had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere, because it was all farmland in front of me. That's not so unusual in New Zealand, but as far as I knew, there were no farms in the Milford Sound.

"Well, crap," I muttered. "Where the hell am I?"

Reseating the backpack on my shoulders, I walked off to look for something I could recognize. If nothing else, someone had to own that farm; if they lived nearby I could ask them. That was going to be embarrassing. For a moment I contemplated putting my bush knife back inside my backpack, instead of having it sheathed off my belt, but decided not to. I looked enough like a hiking tourist, and not a highway robber of some sort.

A deafening roar stopped me on my tracks. I looked up, and saw... I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Freaking spaceships. I couldn't even count them, there were dozens, maybe a hundred of them. Big and small.

A smallish ship whirred down not far from me, and five people jumped out. They were fully armored, carrying very recognizable guns. Two of them saw me, and I saw their faces too.

Batarians. Shit, that explains it.

_I'm dreaming._

A lucid dream. Sweet, Mass Effect themed lucid dream. I forced myself to relax, old habit I managed to train over the years. Having lucid dreams is not very difficult, there are a few tricks that one can practice to learn how to control them. The most important thing is how to let the dream happen, knowing it's a dream and without waking up.

I pulled my sleeve back to look at my watch. Huh, I could see the time just fine, and the hands were moving normally. That was odd. Very lucid dream, then.

The two batarians were running at me now, pointing their guns at me and saying something I couldn't understand. Not the first time that happened in a dream, I've had lucid dreams in German. I don't freaking speak German, but there you go. It probably wasn't actual German (I mean, duh!).

"Bassi yu tekk!" one of the batarians shouted, pointing his shotgun at my face. "Bassi yu tekk!"

With the ease of well practiced dreamery (because I like making up words), I grabbed the shotgun barrel to push it aside, pulled my knife out, and lunged at the batarian's neck, all in one quick, smooth move. I thought he looked pretty surprised when I buried the blade up his unprotected throat.

The other batarian yelled something, could have been words, could have been him clearing his throat, and turned his shotgun at me. The gun didn't make as much sound as one would expect from a real shotgun, but the splatter of yellow blood from the twitching, dying batarian was a lot more expected. What I didn't expect was the flare of pain in my left arm.

Despite myself, I felt a rush of fear and adrenalin in me. I dropped to the side together with the dying batarian, and the second shot missed me completely.

I now had a shotgun myself – and I know how to use them, for hunting at least. It felt strange in my hands, as things usually do in dreams, but it worked just fine when I aimed it at the batarian and pressed the trigger. There was a flare of blue light all around him, and he didn't go down, so I pumped the gun again and shot a second time. That one did hit. Then a third, a fourth, I kept going until the shotgun stopped working, only giving me a hissing sound.

The batarian was very dead. Of course he was, it was my dream.

I looked at my arm, and saw some blood soaking through to my orange Portal 2 track jacket. And it fucking hurt.

"Okay, time to wake up," I said out loud.

…

I didn't. I looked at my hands and started counting my fingers. Ten of them, five each hand. I could count them forward and backwards. I thought about how I got there, and could trace back the entire day's worth of hiking. I could remember preparing my pack the day before in the lodge. I could remember the German couple in there (there are always German tourists in New Zealand; always), they were doing the Milford Track the other way around, and the guy – Jan, I remembered his name was Jan – actually carried his guitar with him. Of all things. We spent a couple of hours playing and singing, it was a pretty good night. He lend me his guitar as well, so I played a few tunes. I could remember everything in perfect detail.

There was a sinking, cold feeling in my gut. These are all the things one usually can't do in a dream. Counting your fingers, remembering how you got somewhere, looking at the time... Those are the things that help you realize you're dreaming.

I wasn't dreaming. Or it was a very, very deep nightmare. Maybe I had an accident and was in a coma, and that's why I couldn't wake up.

Maybe fucking batarians were real and were raiding New Zealand. Of all places.

I rushed back to the forest before any other batarians could see me, and took my backpack off. I had a first aid kit in there, but I didn't know how to treat a freaking gunshot wound. Given what my shotgun had done to the batarian – and I was still carrying the shotgun, it was mine, if I was going to have to fight batarians – it was probably just a glancing shot.

I took my jacket off and looked at my arm. A tiny bullet had gone clean through, clipping my left triceps. I pulled gauzes and tape out of my first aid kit, and tried to staunch the bleeding with them. It wasn't a pretty fix, but I didn't have time to figure out how to do this properly. Last thing I needed was a shotgun to the face, just in case this really wasn't a dream.

Once it was all set, I put my jacket and backpack back on, and grabbed the shotgun. Ships were still passing overhead, so I was glad for the trees covering me.

_What the hell do I do now?_

I could run back into the bush, and keep my head down. Not an ideal proposition, but better than standing out there like an idiot. I peered at the farm out through the trees at the edge of the forest. There was a house, not far from where I was. Slightly strange looking, but probably a cheap prefab of some sort, with two sheds next to it. I didn't remember seeing the house there, so I hoped it was another sign that this was, after all, a dream. Things appearing out of nowhere is typical of dreams.

The other batarians had made for the house, but I was too far to see what was happening. It probably wasn't pretty.

I'm not a hero. In fact, the only reason I wasn't feeling sick after killing the two batarians was that I was still trying to convince myself this was a bad dream. And the reason why I had managed to take two armed slavers by surprise was precisely that belief that this was all a dream. But for all of that, I still took off running towards the house, only stopping on the way to pick my knife up.

The sight of the dead batarian, the smell of alien blood, and my pulling the knife out of the dead alien's throat did manage to make me quite queasy. I wiped the blade on the grass before sheathing it, and picked up the other batarian's shotgun. Two better than one. I jammed it horizontally over my lower back, between the backpack and my back and, shotgun in hand, resumed my run.

It didn't take long to get there, maybe two minutes tops. When I was within spitting distance to the front door, a woman came out of it, running and screaming. I saw long, dark red hair and a blood-stained dress, and that was all I could take before a batarian got to the door and shot her from behind.

The shotgun blast tore through the woman like she was made out of jello, and she fell to the ground in a splatter of flesh and blood. I would have been shocked to death if I had simply been there watching the scene unfold, but as it was, I was on a high of adrenalin and running, and instead I just stopped long enough to point my shotgun and shoot at the batarian.

His kinetic barrier stopped my shot, but I kept shooting anyway. He ducked into cover behind the door, so I changed target and shot at the wall instead, the mass effect accelerated rounds tearing through the thin construction with ease. Once the shotgun overheated, I dropped it unceremoniously, pulled the second one, and kept shooting.

The batarian probably hadn't been expecting that, because he came out of cover as soon as the telltale hissing sound of the overheated weapon could be heard. I got him straight in the gut, and as he fell back, I rushed in, still firing wildly.

Several rounds and an overheat later, he was dead. I was panting heavily, breathing through clenched teeth, and I couldn't tear my eyes off the body. I was feeling sick. Again. I had to step out to throw up, trying desperately to finish quickly before the other batarians came.

Some things cannot be rushed. Throwing up is one of them. My legs felt so weak that I probably looked like a newborn baby giraffe when I stepped back in, shotgun held high with trembling hands. I heard more shots, a boy shouting "daddy!", and then another shot silencing the shout.

I let out a string of profanity, and recklessly chased after the sound. I found a batarian standing in the kitchen, two bodies on the ground around him. This one I didn't catch by surprise, and he got into cover as soon as I appeared, shooting at me and forcing me to scramble behind the doorframe with the speed of desperation. I felt a tug as I dove, and realized the shot had clipped my backpack, and by the looks of it, gone through my sleeping bag.

Too freaking close.

The batarian didn't make a sound at first, and neither did I. After a couple of seconds, he spoke.

"Bassi yu! Orik bassi yu!" he shouted. I didn't have a clue what he was saying, but I could guess something like "_give yourself up so I can shoot you, or become a slave for the rest of your life serving your glorious masters, you worm!_"

_Hey, maybe I can speak batarian after all._

Shotgun ready, I did a quick peek around the corner, shooting wildly, and had to get back in when a shot clipped the wall mere inches from my face.

Yeah, he was a better shot than I was. Nevermind the fact that this was my first ever firefight, at least with real guns and my life on the line. But one thing the batarian didn't have was anger. I was absolutely furious at that point. Scared, sick, surprised, shocked, it all came down to me being angry at those assholes. Maybe that was what the dream was about, the batarians standing in for things and people I hated.

"Well, I better do something about it," I muttered. I looked around, saw the dead batarian not far from me, and a silly idea came to mind.

Have you ever tried moving a dead body? They're heavy. Apparently, the best way to do it is to cut them into six pieces, then feed them to pigs. I didn't have any pigs, or any desire to cut the dead batarian into six pieces, but I did have enough strength and practice to know how to lift a heavy object – they call them deadlifts for a reason – and thanks to the batarian's armor, enough of a grip to actually lift him. Walking to the door was a bit more difficult, but in the end I managed, holding the batarian up by the waist, leaning back so the center of gravity didn't topple me. Then, when I was by the door, I let him go.

He toppled forward and into the view of the doorframe, and sure enough, the batarian inside was shooting before he even knew what it was. I heard some kind of batarian curse, and that was my cue to lean in at a crouch, and start unloading myself.

I had more success than he did. I saw his shields flare, and after his first shot back, which mercifully just grazed my shoulder, his shotgun hissed and overheated. I saw him look down and curse again, dropping the shotgun as my own gun made short work of his shields, and reach for a sidearm...

Without even thinking, I jumped out of my cover and rushed him. In my mad dash, and with him otherwise preoccupied, I caught him square in the face with the butt of my shotgun. He stumbled back, and I hit him again. And again. He went down. I held the shotgun like it was a club, and kept hitting him on the face over and over, until he stopped twitching, and finished by turning the gun around and blowing his face at point blank range.

He didn't move again.

I looked away quickly, feeling that sinking queasiness in my gut that told me my body was about to remind me I had done something sickening, but what I saw was a lot worse. A kid, eight, maybe ten years old, laying dead on the ground with a hole in the middle of his chest. His unblinking eyes were staring at the ceiling, and there was blood. So much blood...

My shotgun dropped from my trembling hands, all their strength lost.

"This can't be happening. This is a dream... Just a dream..." I muttered, over and over.

I was fixated enough on the child that I failed to see movement out of the corner of my eye for several seconds. When I did, I saw a man laying on the ground too. A human. Just as badly injured as the kid, but he was still alive. Barely.

Rushing to his side, I knelt down, and looked at his wounds. I am no doctor, but it looked as if it was a miracle he was still alive. He was gasping for breath, and failing to get any air in. Probably because of the hole on the right side of his chest. There was blood everywhere.

He looked scared, looked at me with wide open eyes. And I didn't know what to do.

A scream, a distant scream, caught my attention. Female voice, not far. The man's eyes opened even wider in surprise, and he started struggling to speak. He couldn't manage. He looked at me, looked in the direction of the door, then looked at me again. Pleading.

_Go save her._

"I'll save her," I said, already standing up to grab my gun. The last thing I saw was what I thought was a grateful look from the man, face frozen in death with that expression on it.

I rushed out of the house, and stopped at the door, trying to find where the scream had come from. Unless they had had more reinforcements, there was only one batarian left.

"Let me go!"

There. One of the sheds. I rushed with completely reckless disregard for my safety, and entered the small building to see a young woman on the ground, struggling with the batarian that was trying to pin her down. He had something in his hand I didn't recognize, but later came to understand was a slaver shock collar. I didn't care.

I rushed him, he turned at the sound of my boots thumping on the ground, and I had the pleasure of seeing his surprised face before the girl clocked him on the head with a pipe. He was stunned enough that it was easy even for me to kick him in the face, put my gun in his mouth when he fell back, and kill him with a single pull of the trigger.

"What... what's going on?" the girl said, looking at the grisly scene. She was breathing quickly, with short, shallow breaths.

"Batarian raid," I replied simply, surprised at how easily the words had come to me. I looked at her, she was probably about fifteen or sixteen, and had dark red hair and green eyes. "Are you hurt?"

"N... no, I... Oh god, no, mom! Dad!" She stood up. "Jimmy!".

She was about to rush out when I grabbed her by the wrist, stopping her mad dash.

"Let go!" she shouted, trying to twist free of my grasp.

"They're gone," I said in a low voice.

"They're not! Let me go!" she insisted. When I didn't, she threw a punch at me, weak, but by luck or intent, well aimed to hit my injured arm.

I yelped in pain and let her go, and she immediately started running. "Don't go!" I shouted. "They're dead! We have to go!"

Cursing mentally, I gave chase, and nearly ran into her as I stepped out. She was rooted to the ground, hands over her mouth and looking at the scene in front of her. Her mother was laying dead on the ground, where the batarian had shot her from behind.

I heard a roar of engines, and saw another dropship doing a low approach, starting to land not far from us.

"We have to go!" I yelled, and grabbed her wrist again.

"No! I won't leave them!" the girl shouted back.

"Your father told me to help you!" I spat back, and pulled her along as I started running towards the forest. "It was the last thing he did, so I'm going to fucking do it!"

I had said it, but it didn't sink until much later that it was true. It was the dying wish of a man that I go protect his daughter. I had never even imagined I'd be in that situation, but it was a serious mindfuck.

Meanwhile, the batarians had seen us, and I could hear the ping of bullets hitting the ground around us. We were much too far for them to hit us, I thought, so I wasn't too worried. All I could think of was to drag this unwilling girl away from danger.

My thoughts of safety were shattered when, with a yelp of pain, the girl stumbled and fell to the ground, face first into the hardened earth. I turned to see blood coming out of her leg, and when she looked up, a deep cut across her left eyebrow. Without much ceremony I practically pulled her to her feet, threw her over my shoulder on a fireman's carry, and resumed my run towards the forest, much slower this time.

My legs were on fire, and my breath ragged and burning by the time we got to the trees. It wasn't exactly safe, the batarians would surely catch us, moreso if they decided to just use their ship and come gun us down, but the trees at least would give us some cover.

After we put some trees behind us, I took a glance back, and dared stop long enough to put the girl down and look at her leg.

Again, the small sliver of metal from the mass effect accelerated round had gone clean though. I took my backpack off, dug for the first aid kit, and did the best I could to stop the blood with gauzes and bandages. Between that and my arm, I was pretty much out of kit. Hopefully it would be enough. The wound on my shoulder had turned out to be just a small graze, so that one didn't worry me at all. I had enough to clean and plaster the cut on the girl's eyebrow, it had bled rather spectacularly, but it wasn't too bad.

"Jimmy..." I heard the girl mutter, chocking a small sob.

"Hey, hey," I said, trying to sound reassuring. I had no idea what to say in a situation like this, to be perfectly honest, but I had to say something. "We're going to make it. Okay? You'll be fine." Yeah, right, fine after having all her family murdered. "What's your name? I'm Roy. Roy Morgan."

"A-Aliana," the girl said. My blood froze, I knew exactly one person called Aliana, and she was a fictional character, a character I created in a videogame. Surely it couldn't be. "Aliana Shepard."

_Shit. **Shit. SHIT!**_

I was probably gaping at her, and obviously making her very uncomfortable, because after a couple of seconds, she looked away, rubbing her hands awkwardly.

Aliana Shepard. I'm in freaking Mindoir, it's the year 2170, and this is the Mass Effect universe. And no matter how much I'd like to believe it, it is not a dream.

"O-Okay Aliana, let's go. We shouldn't stay here."

She tried to stand up, but her leg wouldn't carry her weight. So once again it was up to me to carry her, her hip on my shoulder as I did the fireman's carry once more. It was hard, and a good thing she was small and thin, because my knees were killing me. We went on for what I thought were hours, neither of us saying a word, listening to the sound of ships passing overhead, and the distant report of futuristic weapons.

Aliana Shepard. Future commander of the Systems Alliance, N7, and all around badass. She looked a lot like a frail, scared girl at the moment. The thought of everything that was going to happen to her came to mind, one horrifying event after another, ending in the destruction of the Reapers and, very likely, the death of billions. All on her shoulders.

For a moment, I entertained the thought that this may be some sort of magical forest. If I walked back long enough, I may end up in New Zealand once more, early twenty-first century. That'd be perfect. Not just because I really didn't want to be in the Mass Effect universe just a few years before it all turned to custard, but because nice, safe New Zealand may be the better place for Shepard to spend her life. Screw the Reapers. Anderson can find someone else to take the beacon home. Alenko and Williams eventually became Spectres, I'm sure they'd be able to manage. And as far as the Galaxy went, all they needed was someone to press the Crucible trigger. Her dad had asked me to take care of her.

But that aside, I couldn't take another step.

I set Shepard down as gently as I could, and fell heavily on the ground, breathing desperately and wiping sweat off my face. My knees were killing me. And we hadn't seen a single batarian.

"We should be okay for now. It's getting dark, and I don't think they're following us," I said.

Shepard gathered herself, legs up to her chest and arms wrapped around her knees, and nodded absently.

I took my backpack off, or what was left of it, and pulled the canteen out. I didn't have much water left, so I only took one big mouthful before passing it to Shepard. She looked at it absently for a couple of seconds, then uncurled herself to take it and drink a little. Like I had done, she didn't drink much.

"Are you hungry?" I offered, digging one of my meal bars out of the bag. She took it without a word, looking at the packaging curiously for a while.

I unwrapped my own bar without much ceremony, and bit right in. I was freaking starving. I had set off for a nice, short hike with a bit of a climb, and had instead spent all afternoon running around, half the time carrying a wounded, young version of Shepard, and the other half ducking it out with batarians.

_Dammit, I better wake up soon, because this is the worst dream I've ever had._

I laid my back to the nearby tree trunk, and took another bite. It had to be a dream. How else would I end up in the Mass Effect universe? Besides, I've read enough fics to know how it works. Someone must have put me here, for some reason, whether a twisted or a noble one. There had been no dramatic dream, no sudden glowing apparition, no person or alien coming to me and knowing an awful lot about myself for no reason.

Night came to Mindoir rather quickly, and soon we were in total darkness. No moon to give a bit of light, it would hopefully kept us hidden from batarian eyes. Still, I had to avoid falling asleep. Tired as I was, it would have been a terrible idea.

In the stillness of the night, a muffled sound nearby easily caught my attention. Mindior didn't seem to have much nocturnal life, or the fighting had kept it quiet, but there were just a few chirps of insects to disrupt the silence. So, Shepard's muffled sobs were pretty easy to hear.

Very carefully, I reached out slowly, until my hand met her back. She gave a startled cry of surprise.

"Hey, hey, it's me. It's okay. It's me, I'm here."

I felt her stir, feel out with her hand until she found my arm, and follow until she found the rest of me. Without saying anything, she jumped at me, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing quietly. Putting my arms around her, I let her unload, trying to say something reassuring.

"It's okay. Everything's going to be fine."

I'm not sure when she stopped crying and simply fell asleep, but after a while she was finally resting easily, her head on my shoulder, and breathing slowly. Probably for the best. My plan was to let her sleep it off that night, and hopefully the Alliance marines would be here in the morning. I couldn't quite remember how it went in-game, I knew that when the marines arrived they couldn't save the majority of the colony, but I wasn't sure whether it was because they were too late, or there were too many batarians.

I didn't let my mind wander off too far. I knew myself, and letting my mind wander when tired had always been a sure way for me to fall asleep. Useful skill when I needed to sleep, say, before an exam, but not the best thing when sleep might have meant missing a batarian coming to blow my head off.

Instead, I spent most of the night listening. Actively listening to the sounds the forest was making, and trying to discern what was making the noise. Fighting sleep whenever something sounded like a footstep, or I imagined may sound like a footstep in a bid for adrenalin to give me a waking jolt.

So, when I heard a heavy rustling sound right before dusk, I imagined it had to be a boot scraping the floor of the forest. When several more followed, I was already reaching for my shotgun. I couldn't see a thing, but the sounds were too many, and too close, for it to be anything else.

"Shepard," I said to the sleeping girl resting her head on my shoulder. Then I cursed at myself. This wasn't Commander Shepard, badass extraordinaire and kicker of Reaper butt. This was a young sixteen year old girl who had just seen her family get murdered. I shouldn't put anything else on her shoulders. I was the one with the gun. "Aliana, wake up," I whispered, shaking her gently.

She opened her eyes lazily, trying to take in her surroundings in her haze. When her brain finally clicked into gear, she bolted upright away from me.

"Shhh, quiet," I said, not managing to hide the worry in my voice. I primed my shotgun, and took position behind the trunk of the tree, trying to keep it between me and the noises. They seemed to have subdued, I could only hear a couple of rustles.

My mind didn't really kick into gear until Shepard gave a shrill cry. Lights appeared out of nowhere, pointing at us, and a humanoid figure had grabbed Shepard. Another one was right on top of me, and before I knew what was happening, he had taken the shotgun off my hands.

"LET GO!" Shepard shouted.

The yell spurred me into action like nothing else. I jumped out of my crouch and charged right at the batarian holding Shepard. To my surprise, he looked as if he was expecting it, and meet my charge easily, redirecting my momentum and throwing me to the ground. On my way down I managed to grab his armor, and he accompanied me, with a muttered "fuck" I didn't quite process at the time. I wasn't even thinking, I was acting on pure desperate instinct. I tried to punch him in the face, which considering he was wearing a full face helmet, was not the greatest idea. There was a loud snap and a sharp jolt of pain, letting me know one of my fingers had broken, but I punched again. More batarians came, pinning me down hard, and Shepard was still screaming for them to let her go.

"Stop!" one of the batarians shouted, and for the first time, it clicked that he was speaking English. One of the lights turned to him, and as he took off his helmet I realized they were not batarians. They were humans. "We're with the Alliance, kids. You're safe!"

Shepard stopped shouting, fixing her eyes on the marine. He was a tall, broad shouldered fellow, dark haired with a military buzz cut, a square jawed weathered face, and that was all I could really see under the dim light.

"You've got guts kid, I'll give you that," the marine I tried to fight told me. Everyone let go of me, and he offered me a hand.

I took it, but the relief I was feeling was so intense I almost didn't manage to stand up. He steadied me for a couple of seconds, and then gave me a friendly thump on the shoulder. The marine holding Shepard let her go too, and as soon as he did, she rushed to my side, using me as a shield between her and the marines.

Fine with me, as long as she didn't run away. The unhelmeted man came to me and offered his hand.

"Lieutenant Zabaleta, SSV Einstein. Are you kids okay? Is there anyone else with you?"

"Roy Morgan," I said, and offered my own, trembling and undamaged hand. He gave me a firm, reassuring handshake. "And I... I don't know if anyone else made it."

"Who's that?" he said, gesturing at Shepard with his chin. "Your sister?"

"Aliana Shepard," I replied, looking at her over my shoulder. "No relation, I'm afraid."

"What happened?"

"Batarians, sir." I couldn't help but stand a bit straighter, trying not to look as weak as I knew I was probably coming across. "A ship dropped five of them on her farm. It... it wasn't pretty. We ran."

"I understand. There wasn't anything you could do," he said reassuringly. He nodded at me and turned to the others to give some orders, but his words stayed with me. There wasn't anything I could do. Truth is, there was. While Shepard's father and brother were being shot, I was leisurely standing outside the house, throwing up. If I hadn't... If I had been less of a wuss, I could have gotten there and shot the fucking batarian in the face while her father was trying to protect his son.

I could have saved them. But I didn't.

_Goddammit, what a failure._

"Come on," one of the marines said, taking me out of my thoughts. Being in full armor and helmet, I couldn't tell them apart. This one was a man. Another one was standing next to him. "We'll get you back to base. Are you hurt?"

"She is," I said, pointing at Shepard. With a bit of coaxing, she let go of me, and let the other marine look at her leg.

"What about you?"

"Just scratches," I said, picking my backpack up with my free arm and slinging one strap over my shoulder. Dammit, my hand hurt. I looked at it, but in the low light I couldn't see anything outwardly wrong. My two broken fingers weren't bent out of shape or anything, they just hurt. I could deal with that, I had had broken bones before.

It wasn't long before Shepard was patched up, although we did wait for a while to let the medi-gel set. Soon, Shepard and I were following the marine through the forest, while the second one brought up the rear. The rest continued their patrol. Shepard was still clutching my arm, and since it was my left arm, it hurt like crazy, but I couldn't bring myself to ask her to let me go. I tried to wordlessly disengage her a couple of times, and all I got was her grip tightening on my wound. She probably needed the support, given the way she was visibly limping, so we made very slow progress.

"What's been happening? Is the colony okay?" I asked in a low voice, after we had been walking for a while.

"No. Batarians are gone, but..." he didn't finish the sentence, and I didn't press him any further. Dammit, I shouldn't have asked. I knew it was a slaughter. Shepard didn't need to hear that.

Her grip tightened up on my arm, and I hissed in pain under my breath. Yeah, she had heard it.

It didn't take long to get to the Alliance base, and we got there at the crack of dawn. There was enough light now that I could take a look around and see something. It was a very simple affair, a perimeter dug up around a couple of armored dropships, with several large tents built in between them. There were plenty of marines around, and the activity was damn near frantic. I noticed several soldiers looking at us as we walked by, and two of them actually came to ask about people, trying to find out if we knew whether acquaintances or family had survived the attack.

I saw hope and apprehension in their eyes. Telling them I didn't know was just gut-wrenching. Not just because of them, but also due to the realization of what exactly had happened here. How many people lived in Mindoir? In this colony? Is a colony technically one town, or the whole planet? Were other places on the planet hit too?

Trying to tell myself it was all just a dream didn't help. It was just too real. However it had happened, I was on Mindoir, and people were dying by the hundreds.

"You okay?" the marine in front of me said, and immediately shook his head. "Stupid question. Sorry." He pointed over his shoulder at the open tent, where a field hospital had been set up. "Let the docs take a look at you two."

The hospital had about two dozen stretchers, set in four rows, and with only a few marines on them. It looked empty. So very empty. Like they had been expecting to treat a large number of people, but hadn't found anyone. All they had found was death. I couldn't get the image of the Shepard household out of my head. The dead people, the empty hospital uselessly waiting for them to arrive...

"Okay," I said, barely finishing the single word I managed to choke out.

"Hey, you did good," the marine said, putting his gloved hand on my shoulder. With the other one, he lifted his helmet's visor, and I had a look at the man's face for the first time. A pair of clear blue eyes looked at me from under a pair of bushy blonde eyebrows, and his thick-lipped mouth was curled in something akin to a pained half-smile. He had an ugly scar across his thick, bulbous nose, and a weathered look about him that made it seem like he had seen far too much combat for anyone's good. "You got out of there alive," he glanced at Shepard, "both of you. You didn't just roll over and die. I'm proud of you."

I don't know what did it. The man's words, or that piercing, blue-eyed look he was giving me, but I felt a small glimmer of hope inside of me. Yeah, the reason I had fended off the batarians was that they didn't expect me to fight them at all – otherwise they'd have probably killed me with little effort, judging by how easily the Alliance marine had overpowered me. In fact, four of the five had been taken by complete surprise. Sloppy. They had expected me to just _roll over and die_. Take whatever slavery they offered. I couldn't take that.

While all that was going through my head, the man never stopped looking at me in the eye, never let go of my shoulder.

"T-thank you sir," I finally managed to whisper.

"It's Richard. Richard Jameson."

"Roy Morgan," I replied.

"I know, you told us before." This time he made a more genuine smile, and gave me a light thump on the shoulder. "Take it easy now, the cavalry's here."

He looked at Shepard, and I realized she, too, was very intently looking at Jameson. She still didn't say anything, which was really worrying me. I had no idea what to do to help her, I remembered Commander Shepard as an indestructible, unstoppable force. I always thought Mindoir had been where the commander had grabbed the galaxy by the balls and given them a good twist, if one chose the colonist background that is. But she looked like my arm was the only thing stopping her from falling apart.

"Come on, let's go inside. I bet they can fix your leg in no time. Does it still hurt?" Stupid question, given the way she was limping, but there it was. I got no answer, not even a look.

I sighed and led her inside, where a very helpful nurse took us to a corner with free stretchers. Even before I had sit down, there was a doctor with us already, and together we managed to convince Shepard to let go of my arm and sit down on the stretcher.

"Woah!" the doctor said.

Almost immediately I felt my legs give, and would have ended up faceplanting the floor if the doctor and the nurse hadn't grabbed me. My backpack hit the floor, and some of its contents spilled out. For all my talk about holding Shepard up, I was the one who almost dropped when we split.

"Come on, have a seat, tell me where it hurts," the doctor said, obviously trying for a bit of lightweight humor.

"I'm fine," I lied. "Take care of her. She got shot through the leg, and-"

"Yes, we're taking care of her too. Now lay down and tell me what hurts," the doctor insisted, more forcefully this time. On the stretcher next to me, Shepard was sitting down with her arms over her chest, crossed as if to give herself a hug. All she was missing was to be rocking backwards and forwards. At least she was nodding and shaking her head to the nurse's questions.

With a sigh, I put my head down on the soft surface. "I got shot through the arm, grazed my shoulder, and I think I broke two fingers," I said. The doctor had an omni-tool out, and was already scanning me. I closed my eyes and let him work; it felt like it had been an age since I last managed to catch some sleep.

"Well, that's actually not so bad. Should have you up and running in no time," the doctor said. "I'm going to numb your hand and do some bone weave." I felt a jab in my hand, which quite frankly, didn't hurt particularly bad. He had stopped talking, so I opened my eyes to look at him. He was examining my patchwork job on my arm with some interest. "You had all this and didn't have medi-gel?" he said, pointing at my discarded backpack. What was left of the first aid kit had spilled out too.

"Uh..."

"Well, next time I recommend you pack some."

"Sure thing doc," I said, trying not to give anything away. I wondered if my gear would look as out of place as a whalebone umbrella would in the twenty-first century.

He reached out and poked at my hand. "You feel this?"

"Not at all," I sighed, and dropped heavily on the pillow again.

"Great. Go ahead and get some sleep, I'll be done by the time you wake up."

He didn't have to tell me twice. Even through I was still carrying all the excitement of the day, I closed my eyes and was out like a candle in a hurricane.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a seriously nice day out in the courtyard, sunny and without the faintest bit of breeze. I had my guitar, and I was strumming along a nonsense melody with just a few simple chords, sitting on the grass by the main Science building in campus. That tends to attract some attention, and I've gotten a few very nice jam sessions with other students starting that way.

I looked down at the guitar and strummed along again, the sounds coming out almost effortlessly. I wasn't even thinking of what I was strumming.

"That's cool," another voice said, and I looked up to see a man sitting down next to me. I thought to myself that I knew that man. He had a guitar too, and started playing a different piece. I tried to follow, but I wasn't managing to make any sounds.

I looked at the strings, and they were just sitting there. There were... I couldn't count them. _That__'s__ something that I should pay attention to_, I thought, but I was distracted by screams.

Screams everywhere. The sound of guns. Armored figures were moving through the buildings, shooting people left and right. There were screams, but I couldn't see anyone actually screaming. All the people just stood there, letting the figures shoot them. So much blood. I couldn't stand up. One of the figures walked to me slowly, a rifle held to his shoulder. Four eyes were staring at me mercilessly. The man next to me was dead, and I didn't even see who shot him.

When he pressed the trigger, I opened my eyes. My heart was beating furiously inside my chest, and for a moment I couldn't tell where I was.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

The scream made me bounce on my bed like nothing else. I knew that voice. The redheaded girl on the bed next to me was struggling against two people in white armor. Without thinking, I bounced off my feet and crashed on the nearest armored person. I caught him completely by surprise, because he let go of the girl and came down to the ground with me. I didn't fight him, the girl was still screaming, and I just had this thought that I had to help her.

When I got back to my feet, the other armored person had backed off, and was trying to say something.

"Calm down! You're safe!" He shouted. "We're not going to hurt you," he finished, trying to sound as soothing as possible.

My addled brain was finally kicking into gear, and I recognized where we are. The hospital. Shepard was still swinging wildly with her hand, sitting on the bed and trying to keep the man at bay. Field doctor? He was in full armor, and-

_Oh crap, I just knocked a doctor down?_

Deciding quickly what was most important, I tried to stop Shepard. As soon as I got near, she turned to me and swung her fist at me. It was a clumsy effort, even for my freshly-awaken self. I managed to catch the swinging hand with my own, and the back of my mind was surprised at how much her puny punch fucking hurt.

I still didn't let her hand go.

"Shepard!" No, not Shepard. "Aliana! It's me. It's Roy. It's okay, remember me? It's okay."

She looked at me for what seemed like an eternity, and her fear slowly melted away.

"Roy? You... where..." I wondered if she was drugged, because she looked very confused now. Maybe she was sleeping, same as I was.

_What was I dreaming about?_

I couldn't remember, it didn't matter. Shepard's confusion was gone very quickly, and now she was settling down. Then she looked at my hand, which was holding hers, and gasped.

When I looked at it, I realized what she had done, and why the two armored medics were trying to restrain her. She had taken hold of a scalpel, and when I stopped her punch, it had gone clean through my hand. And now that I was looking at it, the pain and the slightly sickening feeling were damn near unbearable.

She let go of the scalpel like it was poisoned, and put both hands over her mouth.

"Oh my... I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She kept repeating it over and over, her voice muffled by her hands.

"It's okay," I tried to sound chirper than I was actually feeling. "A little medigel and I'll be good as new."

"Damn son," the man I had knocked over muttered, getting up.

"Yeah, sorry about that," I said, looking at him for a moment before looking down. "I... I just got up, and... Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"You shouldn't be up at all," he retorted, and pushed me back in bed, not too roughly, but forcefully enough. He pulled some gauzes out of the small table between beds, and started fussing over my hand.

"What happened anyway?" I said, and looked at Shepard.

"Martin was putting her under for surgery," the medic replied when she didn't answer. He didn't look up, and I didn't realize the pause in his speech meant he was about to pull the scalpel off. I grunted in pain and surprise when he did, but managed not to scream. "Almost cut my damn arm."

"Is that true?" I said.

"Sorry," Shepard muttered, looking away. She didn't look sorry, she looked like she said that because she thought she was supposed to.

"Sh- Aliana," I said. She didn't look. "Ali." She finally looked up. "They are going to help you. I'll be right here the whole time, okay? Don't worry."

After a short pause, she spoke again. "You... Will you..."

"The whole time. Promise."

She nodded, and to my relief, she didn't do anything when the doctors came to fuss over her again. My hand was killing me, but after the doctor put some medi-gel in it – literally in it, as the whole went clean through – I was feeling a lot better.

Come to think of it, my arm was feeling a lot better too. And the broken fingers, well, those still hurt, but it may be the scalpel that just went through it.

"Didn't hit any nerves or big blood vessels," the doctor said, and now that he was just standing there I could see the nametag on his armor. Jones.

_Doctor Jones. Really?_

That put a smile on my face. "Thanks doctor Jones," I said, and he just nodded and left me there.

On the other bed, they were fussing over Shepard, which reminded me about the surgery bit.

"Doc, what's wrong with her?" I said. Stupid question, unless I was more specific. "I mean, the surgery?"

"She's fine, just need to open the leg wound and clean it properly, she's got some debris in there."

"Oh, okay." He was about to pull the little privacy curtain around her bed, so I stopped him. "Can you leave that open? I said I'd be here and-"

"Fine," he interrupted. He didn't sound angry, but he was a bit short. If he was the one Shepard got with the scalpel I could understand it. I looked at her, and she looked like she was just peacefully sleeping. I thought of asking why they needed to put her under for a minor surgery, but decided against it. The last thing the doctor probably wanted was to answer fifty questions while he operated.

The tent was still as empty as ever. There were even fewer marines taking up bed space, and I could see no other civilians at all. I checked my watch, but since I hadn't checked it before going to sleep, I had no idea how long it had been.

"That's a very nice antique."

I turned to the voice to see a woman sitting on the next bed to my right. Huh, I hadn't heard her coming. She had long black hair (unusual for the military, I thought), a narrow face, narrow eyes... All her features looked rather _sharp_, if I could put it that way. She was wearing a very light set of armor, but it wasn't white like the doctors'.

"I'm Marie," she said, and offered her hand. I shook it tentatively, not really ready to say anything. I wasn't sure where this wariness had come from, but I tend to trust my instincts when that happens. "How are you feeling?"

I shook my head, turned to look at Shepard, and sighed. "Fine. Better than her."

"You don't have to worry, her leg is just a minor problem. She'll be up and running in no time."

"That's not what I mean," I said, and when I looked at Marie, I thought she knew that wasn't what I meant. I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. _Why is she annoying me?_

"I know. I tried to speak with her but... She's lost her whole family, except you."

_Wait, what?_

"I'm not family," I said, a little too quickly.

"Maybe not, but you may as well be now. You care about her, don't you?"

There is a familiar uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, warning me that the conversation is going to a place where I don't want to go. "What do you want?"

She didn't sigh, but looked like she wanted to. "I want to help you, Roy. Both of you. You have been through a very traumatic experience."

"So you're a shrink?" My head was already sorting through the conversation. Anything I said would be analyzed, dissected, and probably thrown back at me in the form of a question. I really wasn't in the mood to answer twenty questions and share how I felt about being asked how I felt.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you say so?"

"I wanted you to relax. I'm not here to judge you, Roy. Just tell me what happened."

I looked at Shepard. She was still under, all I could see was her face, the rest hidden behind the curtain. I didn't mind them covering the surgery, no matter how minor. I just wanted to see her face. "You said it already, she lost her whole family. What else do you want me to say?"

"Who did you lose?"

"Nobody," I said, and looked back at her.

"Nobody? No family?"

"Nope," I replied evenly. I hadn't thought about it. No family, they were all back in the twenty-first century. Well, it wasn't too different from them being halfway across the world anyway. Only difference they couldn't bother me by phone or mail now.

As I said, I hadn't really thought about it, and in truth, it didn't seem to make much difference. I had already done the _good fucking riddance_ dance when I moved, so really, this was just a little bit extra.

"I see." Dammit, she probably caught that I was thinking there. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked cautiously.

"Not really," I said, and shrugged. Maybe it was a big deal, but at the time, it just didn't seem that relevant.

Our conversation was interrupted with a hubhub of activity coming from the landing area. A shuttle had dropped a whole bunch of wounded marines, and they were being hastily brought to the hospital. The doctor was already directing his staff, prioritizing the wounded and filling the ranks of beds. Despite the new arrivals, the whole place was still eerily empty.

Marie must have caught my gaze, because she was already asking questions.

"What is it?"

"This place," I replied, and paused to think about what I was about to say. I was going through possible answers, second answers, follow-up questions, and running the whole conversation in my head. It rarely worked, but I couldn't help it. "It's so empty. Like you were expecting a lot more wounded."

"We were." The way she looked at me, with that sadness in her eyes, I couldn't tell whether it was genuine or a well-practiced mask. I always sucked at reading people, so the fact that she was showing so much how she felt put my guard up immediately. Was it genuine, or just an act to get me to lower my guard? "There are a lot more batarians than we thought. Reinforcements are on their way, but... It may be a day or two before they arrive."

"I thought the batarians were gone."

"From this area, yes. There's a lot more in the city."

Her eyes lingered, looking at the incoming crew, until the last soldier came out of the shuttle. She closed her eyes, sighed, and then turned to me.

"Something wrong?" I said.

She didn't answer immediately. For what I could see, she was thinking about her answer, which would have made me put my guard up if it wasn't already.

"No civilians," she said, shaking her head.

"Oh."

"Anyway. Roy. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"Because it sucked?"

She made a small smile. Not too open, that would have sent the wrong message. Just a small gesture to tell me she knew what I had done, and the she knew I knew what she meant.

"Fine," I muttered.

It took me a while to get started. I didn't know how to start really, I was in New Zealand circa early twenty-first century and now I'm over here, and it's probably some kind of parallel universe? That wouldn't really work. So I started by saying I was lost in the forest, and ended up in the farmstead. I paused to look at her, and she didn't ask anything, she just nodded for me to continue.

Damn I was glad about that.

So I continued. The batarian with the shotgun, and how I buried my knife in his throat. How I had caught both of them completely by surprise.

"It was just... so surreal. I just thought it was all a dream. Batarians attacking? I was sure it was a dream. I was so sure I didn't hesitate. If... If I hadn't..."

"Denial is not an unusual reaction." Specially if this was all supposed to be a fictional universe in a videogame. I didn't say that, I just nodded. "Does it still feel like a dream?"

"Kinda..."

I was expecting a lecture of some sort about how I had to face my fears and accept what had happened to me, but nothing of the sort came. She just repeated the nod I gave her, inviting me to continue.

"After I patched myself up, I ran towards the house, where the other batarians had gone."

"That was very brave of you."

"Or just stupid. This was all a dream, remember?"

"Even after the first fight?"

"Yeah..." Meaning "_not really_".

Again, no quip or judgement, or telling me I was full of crap, just a nod. It was starting to become very unsettling, I didn't know what was worse, her silent nods or her stupid questions. _Maybe I should stop talking, _I thought. The temptation was there, to just give monosyllabic answers or short, pointless ones until she went away. I've done it before. It works, eventually they get bored and leave you alone.

As the silence dragged on, she prompted me again. "What happened in the house?"

I opened my mouth, but other than a few nonsensical noises, nothing came out. Her mentioning the house had brought back the image of Shepard's family. Not the batarians shooting at me, or the one that probably would have killed me if not for Shepard's timely intervention, but the image of the little boy with a hole through his chest, eyes fixed to the ceiling with that... _surprised_ expression.

A sudden contact on my shoulder brought me out of my reverie, and by instinct, I immediately recoiled, nearly falling off the bed, and snapping my head towards whoever had touched me. I don't know what face I had, because Marie took a step back immediately, looking very surprised. By then my every instinct was _screaming _at me that I had screwed up big time. To get up and run as far as possible. That I had shown weakness and now I was going to pay for it.

Slowly, very slowly, showing me every step of the way what she was doing, Marie came closer and put her hand on my shoulder. I flinched a little, very uncomfortable.

"It's fine. Whatever happened in there, you did it to stay alive," she said.

Oh how wrong she was. My voice was a little hoarse when I spoke, my body's way of telling me to _shut up_, but I had to correct her. "I didn't... I couldn't save anyone."

"You tried."

"I didn't," I said. "I... shot a batarian. At the door, caught him by surprise. After he shot her mom. Then... Then I couldn't go in. I threw up, I couldn't walk... I... I only went inside when I heard the shots. It was too late. Too l..."

My vision blurred, and without warning, I started crying. I clamped my eyes shut hard, bringing my hand to pinch the bridge of my nose between them. I kept quiet, but the tears wouldn't stop. And all the while, Marie kept her hand on my shoulder. I was expecting her to say something, dreading it even, but she didn't. She waited patiently for me to pull myself together.

When I finally did, opening my eyes and taking a deep, trembling breath, she sat down at the edge of my bed. Too close, too damn close, that's all I could think, even though she was keeping an arm's length distance between us.

"This was your first time in combat," she said, and it wasn't a question. "And you have no training. You shouldn't blame yourself, you couldn't control how you would react to that."

"How would _you _know?" I said with a venomous tone. Now I was angry at her, she was just a paper pusher, she couldn't know.

"I did three tours myself, light infantry," she replied, not at all fazed by my response. It didn't sound like a boast, or a reproach. It just was. I looked at her, and wondered. She must have signed up young for that. I didn't know how long a tour was though, so I couldn't quite tell. Seeing as I was silent, she continued. "I spent most of the time patrolling the Terminus border, or fighting groundside with pirates and raiders. After three years of that, I was ready to get out."

The silence hung for a few seconds. If only I could keep her talking, maybe she wouldn't ask me any more questions. It was a stupid thought, but I wasn't all there at the time.

"Was it this bad?" I said.

"No. Not any one op was like this," she said, looking around at the empty beds. "But over time, three years of death and misery, it all added up. My first bad fight left me a mess, so many people died..." She shook her head, and turned to face me. Despite the somber look, her face lit up slightly with a smile. "I got help, and dug myself out of the hole. I found helping others helped myself, too."

I nodded, but before I could think of anything else, she resumed her barrage of questions.

"Tell me about the house, Roy," she said. Her voice was low and calm, making the request a comforting thought. That raised my guard again, too comfortable. I couldn't help but think it was all just an act, that she was planning something. "You'll feel better. Trust me."

_Trust you,_ I thought. _Tall order_.

I sighed. There was no point delaying it. "When I got in, I followed the noise to the kitchen. The batarian inside almost blew my head off," I said, and pointed at my shoulder. "And... We both got in cover, and kinda became a stalemate. I didn't know what to do, and he was just waiting for me to make a move. I didn't have any shields or armor, and he had both. So the only thing I could think of was to drag the batarian I had killed to the door, and kinda drop him there."

Marie raised her eyebrows at that, but didn't say anything, so I continued.

"That got the other one by surprise, and gave me a chance to shoot him. It was probably stupid, but it worked. And then..."

And then I stopped talking. There it was, the image of the kid – _Jimmy? Was his name Jimmy? I can't remember –_ staring with empty eyes at the ceiling.

"What do you see?" Marie said, very very softly. She was asking in present tense. What was in my mind right then.

"It's... Jimmy. I think his name is Jimmy. He's just... He has this hole in his chest, and is staring at the ceiling. He just looks so surprised. Like his eyes are so wide, and his mouth is hanging open. Just... Just surprised."

"What else was there? Was there anyone else in the kitchen?"

I forced my thoughts away from the boy. There was someone else. Oh yeah, there was.

"Her dad. He was on the floor too, he... God, so much blood. There was so much blood. But... But he was alive, he couldn't speak. Then we heard this scream, and he looked at me." I paused to swallow hard, and Marie handed me a glass of water. My hands weren't exactly steady, but I managed a few sips before giving it back. "He looked at me, and it was like he told me to go help her. To leave him and help Sh- help Aliana. And I did. I just left him there."

I had to stop at that point, swallowing hard again. The boy's – _Jimmy! _– face was bad enough. His father's face, pleading for me to leave him to die... That was something else.

"And you saved her, don't you think that he'd be happy about that?"

I wanted to say no. That I should have stayed behind. That I should have helped him. Shepard would have gotten herself out of trouble, I knew it; that's how it happens in the game. She escaped. Somehow. She's Shepard, for crying out loud!

But then again, the game be damned. I was there. It was real.

I turned to look at Shepard and, to my infinite surprise, her eyes were open, and she was looking at me. How long had we been talking? The curtains were gone, the doctors were gone...

_Shit. Shit!_

"Shepard. I'm sorry. I'm..."

She turned away as I spoke, closing her eyes and burying her head deeply on the pillow. But just before she turned I saw such a pained expression that I couldn't even keep talking.

I was about to get up, but Marie stopped me, put a hand on my shoulder and shook her head when I looked at her. Why was she stopping me? I had to tell her something.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Roy," she said, keeping her voice down. "You did the best you could. That's all anyone can ask of you."

With a couple of gentle taps, she left my speechless self and went to talk with Shepard. I couldn't hear what they were saying, or rather, what Marie was saying. And truth to be told, I didn't want to know. It wasn't my place to butt in, much as I wanted to. I could wait. I wasn't going anywhere.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Well, the aftermath of something like the Batarian rain of Mindoir can't be easy, specially if that's where your family was killed. So I'm not sure if I managed to put through just how bad it was. Of course, it's not like it's over. We know from in-game that it hit hard not just the (very) few survivors, but also the people who fought there.

Many, _many_ thanks for all the support shown in the form of follows/favourites and specially reviews! No, seriously, thanks a lot for all the positive feedback =)


	3. Chapter 3

We were shipped out of Mindoir after a week, our numbers having been barely bolstered after the gruelling fight against the batarians. Of the whole colony, I saw four other people being shipped out. Kids, all of them. I was the only adult.

To say that the mood was glum would be the understatement of the century. Of any century. The children (Shepard being the oldest, a ten year old named Joe being the youngest) looked like ghosts. The Alliance marines were almost as bad. The impotence against the enormous number of batarians, the staggering number of deaths, it was all just too much. For many of them, it was their first time in a conflict like this. Marie had a lot of work, and she didn't look so flash herself.

And then there were the wounded.

Shepard didn't see them, Marie made sure of that. But I did.

Even with late twenty-second century technology, brain surgery was a very tricky beast. Things like removing tumours and rehabilitation had improved by leaps and bounds, but messing with the wiring was still very difficult. Options were limited, and outcomes were unpredictable.

So when I heard that the batarians were using mind control chips, to turn captured humans into docile slaves, I could hardly believe it. I imagined it'd be some extremely advanced technology I wouldn't be able to recognize.

I didn't consider the other option, possibly because I didn't want to believe anyone would do something like it. Turns out that, when pressed for time, the batarians take a very pragmatic approach to chipping their slaves. Place the tiny chip over the left eye's tear duct, then hammer it into the brain with something that looked like an ice pick. If it worked, great, and if not, throw the prospective slave away and try with the next one.

When I saw the hundreds that had been reduced to barely breathing vegetables, something inside of me just withered and died. The hope that, after all this, my being in the Mass Effect universe would turn into one big, exciting adventure. It was replaced by a mixture of anger and despair. One can read about large scale atrocities, see events like that in-game, explosions wiping people in a shower of pixelated gore. Seeing real people treated like so much meat like this, that was something very different.

It all became so very real.

Thus, one week and we were waiting for the shuttle to touch down. Fighting had long since finished, and the rebuilding effort was now supposed to begin. It was me, the kids, and no less than ten marines. No wounded were being shipped out with us, which seemed like quite a waste. I had seen those shuttles take more than fifty people, including some on stretchers. Maybe they didn't want us seeing that. Or the kids at least.

"Roy," I heard a voice calling, and turned to see Marie walking towards us. She was smiling, but she looked tired. I think I saw her age a whole five years in that last week, her eyes had dark circles under them, and she just looked _weary._

She stopped a few paces away from us, so I walked off to meet her. "Marie, something in your mind?"

"What, you're not going to say goodbye?" she replied in a mock hurt tone.

I chuckled and shook my head, there was no real need to say anything. Before the small silence became uncomfortable, she pulled something out of the webbing of her field armor, and offered it to me. It looked like some kind of wrist accessory.

"What's that?" I said.

"An omni-tool," she explained, and she definitely looked surprised. "You've never seen one?"

_Oh crap_. "Never used one, no."

She saw me hesitate, so she took my left hand and put the tool around the forearm. With a quick swipe, the interface came to life. I have to admit, it looked very cool. With a few moves, she opened a messaging app, and I saw there was a message there for me.

* * *

><p><em>Hello Roy,<em>

_This is my personal mail address. I hope you will keep in touch, I'll be here if you need me._

_Marie._

* * *

><p>"It's just our standard bluewire," she explained. "We have plenty of spares."<p>

"Nice. Thank you."

"You're officially a citizen of the Systems Alliance now," she said. She hadn't prodded me any further about me being in no Alliance database at all. No information meant I wasn't officially a threat, but I wasn't a registered citizen either. I'm not sure what she assumed, I hoped it was something like me being some sort of luddite. Which wasn't far from the truth, come to think of it.

"I feel so honored." There was another pregnant pause. I lowered my voice a bit, and cast a quick glance towards the others. "Anything you wanted to say away from them?"

"Yes. Aliana."

"I know, you've told me already. Don't push her, just be ready to be there for her when she's ready. And be ready to let go of her."

She nodded. "She needs stability, a foster family. They all do. But if she sees you as a reminder of Mindoir, it may be better if you put some distance between the two of you. And vice versa."

"I want to help her," I sighed.

"I know, and it may turn out it's best if you stay close. Listen to the _shrinks_ back at Arcturus, okay?" She smiled at that, the word _shrink_ had lost its edge between the two of us after the first day.

"Will do. And thanks."

"No, thank you. After all this... You're pulling through, you'll be fine. Don't give up."

"Oh, you can bet the farm," I said. I had a lot to do, first helping Shepard any way I could, then figuring out how on Earth I was going to prepare the entire freaking galaxy for the reapers. "I'm not giving up."

She nodded, and there was something in the way she looked at me that made me just pull her close and give her a hug. I think she was surprised, but soon enough she put her own arms around me too.

"You stay in touch too. And if you need to talk too, well, you gave me the omni-tool," I said. She nodded. "Even though I'm not a _shrink_." That got a laugh out of her, and when we separated, she was looking noticeably happier.

"Come on, I want to say goodbye to the others too," Marie said, and led on towards the shuttle. It had landed while we were talking, and they were just waiting for us.

Some of the kids were quite emotional saying goodbye to her, I had quickly figured her out as being great with kids. Shepard was more reserved, but she did take a hug from her without complaints.

The flight up to the ship was pretty uneventful. I thought we'd be taking the shuttle all the way through, but instead we docked onto a larger ship, which turned out to be a frigate. It was my first time in space, so I was feeling rather... Weird. I should have been excited, but instead I was just nervous. Taking off in the shuttle had been uneventful, a bit of trembling here and there, but the gravity dampeners took all the excitement out of the whole affair. And given that the ship had artificial gravity, I may as well have been in a Boeing taking a flight to Australia.

And the shuttle had no windows either. Neither did the frigate, at least no windows we could see.

_Windows are structural weaknesses._

So, all in all, my first experience in space was rather underwhelming. Worse still, I knew I could have done with the distraction, and so could the kids. The flight to Arcturus was apparently a pretty long haul, three days all in all. They put us all in a single room, which had cargo crates on one side, and with just a few bunks for us to sleep in. Not that it looked a lot like the Normandy, but I figured the accomodations had been hastily prepared.

There was something else that was different. The crew. On the ground, the marines and the support personnel all had been fighting the batarians, and dealing with the aftermath, so the atmosphere was... subdued. There was anger, for sure, but there was a kind of quiet desperation that had crept through the ranks. As such, the Alliance marines seemed to share those kids' pain, in some way. Here, the men and women were clearly angry, but the way they interacted with us, those pitying looks they gave us, it was sickening.

Shepard herself didn't seem to enjoy it either. There were always crew members coming around to talk to us, and I could tell she was very uncomfortable. The more they tried to comfort her, the more she seemed to retreat within herself.

It was a realization that maybe I had been doing the same. Was I giving her the same looks? Treating her like a lost puppy? Maybe Marie was right, I should try to just go back to normal. Not that normal was an option for me, but it should have been for Shepard.

That night, just like pretty much every other night, she woke up gasping in the middle of it after a nightmare. All the kids were having them. I was having unpleasant dreams myself, but I did know how to control them. A little, at least; lucid dreaming isn't an exact science.

And just as usual, my sleep was on a hairtrigger, so I was awake as soon as Shepard had made her first noise.

"Another nightmare Ali?" I whispered. We both had bottom beds on adjacent bunks, so it was easy enough to whisper like that. When we arrived, I chose the bunk first, and she had chosen the adjacent one without a word. "It's okay, I have them too."

I brought up my omni-tool, set to the dimmest setting. It barely gave enough light to tell shapes apart, but it was enough.

"Yes," she whispered. She looked like she was about to say something else, but she didn't.

"You know, there's a way to fix it. Two ways, actually." She just looked at me. "The first one is to talk about them." As I expected, that got no response. "The second one is to learn how to do lucid dreaming."

"Lucid dreaming?"

"Yes."

"What's lucil dreamering?" another small voice called from above me. Immediately followed by a head poking out of the edge of the top bunk bed. That was Joe, the youngest kid. A short bundle of messy black hair and blue eyes with far too much grief behind them.

"Lucid dreaming. That's when you are dreaming, but you know you're in a dream. Have you ever had it happen?"

"Uhhh..." he thought about it for a while. "Maybe."

"When I realize I'm in a dream, I just wake up," Shepard added.

"I managed to fly once in a dream, on purpose. It was pretty cool." A different voice, that one from the bunk on the opposite side of Shepard's. More voices followed. The entire little crew was awake, apparently; some couldn't sleep, others had woken up after bad dreams.

I flicked the omni-tool to high light, jammed it on the top beam between the frame and the mattress, and the kids all gathered around me. Five pairs of expectant eyes peered at me – the four kids' and Shepard's – and it struck me that I had no idea if any of this would work; but at least I would give them something.

"Okay, so first of all, the best thing to do is to talk about the bad dream. What did you usually do when you had a bad dream before?"

The kids looked at each other. One of them, a girl with blonde hair that had to be about twelve, curled up with her legs against her chest, and her arms on her knees. "Mom would just give me a kiss, and they'd go away," she said in a low voice. She was sitting next to Shepard and, without any more prompts, the future commander put her arm around the girl's shoulders, gathering her close.

_They aren't lost puppies. You hated being treated like that, and so did they, _I reminded myself.

"Yes. It helps to talk about it, to one another, or to someone else you can trust. A friend. We're all friends here, right?" That made me the target, since I was the oldest. "But that doesn't help you while you're dreaming. If you know how to have lucid dreams, you can change what you're dreaming, or as Aliana said, just wake up before it gets bad."

Nods of assent. I wondered if they were really taking this in, or they liked to just think the dreams could go away. Considering the audience, I was starting to think this whole explanation was probably going to be a stupid idea.

"It's not going to make the dreams go away, and you'll have to practice. Okay?" More nods. "Good. There are three things you have to do to learn to have lucid dreams. The first one is getting used to dreaming."

That got a few confused looks, which was probably because the explanation wasn't very good.

"Did you know that we dream every night? Every single night, only most people don't remember the dreams. They may remember they were dreaming right when they wake up, but by the time they've had breakfast, they have forgotten."

No one stirred, so I continued.

"So first of all, you need to learn how to dream, and remember dreaming. This is what you will do. Every time you wake up, I want you to write down what you remember about whatever it is you were dreaming. It could be a word, a feeling, even just '_I was dreaming_'. Just get in the habit of it, because when you do, you'll start to be more alert when you dream." I looked around, and realized only Shepard and the blonde girl had omni-tools. "We'll have to get you a datapad or a notebook or something though," I said, and smiled at them. "Still even if you can't write it down, just try to remember when you wake up, okay?"

I got several okays all around.

"Good. The second thing is, when you close your eyes to go to sleep, I want you to think _I'm going to have a lucid dream._" I looked up at Joe. "You can think _I'm going to have lucil dreamery_ if you want, Joe." That got a few chuckles. "Don't keep yourself awake, just think of it when you close your eyes."

I took a deep breath. "The last part is the difficult one. Once you get used to all this, you have to _realize_ you're in a dream."

"How do you do that?" Shepard said.

"There are several ways. Try to count your fingers. Try to open your omni-tool and look at the time. Try to tie your shoelaces. Try to remember how you got where you are. If you're standing in the middle of the street, did you walk out from home? Did a shuttle drop you?" That didn't receive a very enthusiastic response, but I wasn't surprised. "Little things like those are very hard to do in a dream, but are very easy in real life. Once you realize you're in a dream... You'll probably wake up."

Oh, that disappointed them, I could tell. I tried to hold it back, but I ended up grinning. "But only at first. With some practice, you'll learn to realize something is a dream, but not wake up."

"And then?" Joe said.

"Then the sky is the limit. It's your dream! You can do whatever you want with it."

"Like what?" he insisted.

"Okay. You know what I was dreaming just now?" He shook his head. "I was in Mindoir, and the... _A _house was burning, with people inside." One of the kids took a sharp breath in. Too close home, probably. "But I knew it was a dream. So a door opened on the side of the house, and everyone ran outside. Then the fire became very small, we all took marshmallows out, and started roasting them."

"No way!" Joe said, laughing.

"I'm telling you, you can do whatever you want," I replied. "Okay then, we can talk about it tomorrow, all right? Let's go back to bed."

A few groans followed, but the kids complied. I was pretty sure that had been an overly long, far too complicated explanation, but at least I kept them distracted. Nobody in that room had had a good night's sleep since the attack, including me. And maybe just hearing from me that they could do something to stop the bad dreams would help them.

"Roy," Shepard whispered, after just a few minutes in darkness.

"Yeah?"

"What were you really dreaming about?"

_Caught red handed_, I thought. "I really was dreaming about that fire," I said, and gave myself a couple of seconds. "It was your home. You were trapped inside, with all your family. I did get you all out... But it was just a dream."

With that, silence fell again. I thought she had fallen asleep, and I was halfway to falling asleep myself when Shepard spoke. "It was dad."

"Huh?"

"Dad. All I can remember is dad. He was hugging me, and then there was this awful noise... and I woke up."

Our bunks were close enough that I could reach out and touch Shepard, which I did. I put my outstretched hand on her shoulder, and felt her trembling underneath. Holding back her crying. She hadn't cried at all since the first day, she had probably been holding it back all the time.

"Want to talk about him?" I said.

"You want to talk about your dad?" she bit back.

"Okay," I replied, and removed my hand. Marie had been pretty clear about it, don't push her, and let her come to me when she's ready.

* * *

><p>Our arrival at Arcturus seemed to cause a bit of a hubhub, and not only among the crew. Unlike the SSV Trafalgar, the frigate that had brought us there, there were windows all over the station. And the view was just unbelievable. I know I was gaping, mouth hanging open, when I stepped out the ship's airlock. Being greeted by the view of the planet far below was something else. Themis. The enormous reddish-brown gas giant sat out there, looking over the station, pulling it close into its orbit.<p>

"Quite a view, isn't it?"

I turned to look at the marine behind me, and then at the queue that had formed behind me as I held up everyone trying to leave.

"Oh, crap, sorry," I muttered, hurriedly moving ahead. The marine just laughed and slapped me on the shoulder as he passed.

I was the last of our little group to make it out of the ship. I expected the rest of the group to be as stuck looking through the window as I was; as far as I knew, they were all colony kids with no space experience. But the long faces and downcast gazes told me a different story. None of them cared much for where they were. They did look up when I stepped in, but it didn't have that much of an effect.

"The view is amazing," I said, gesturing up with my chin at the window. Shepard and Joe did look that way, but didn't seem to care. The rest got back to their sullen selves. Not good. However, I didn't have a clue what to do or how to help.

Before long we were taken to what would be their accommodation – psych ward. The kids were taken to their own wing, but for me it was more straightforward. I got taken for a normal consult, and after a somewhat lengthy psych eval, I was given a _mostly_ clean bill of health. Apparently, Marie's reports said I had recovered well. We talked about Mindoir, rescuing Shepard, and fighting the batarians. Since being transplanted into a different universe didn't come up – fancy that – the doctor gave me the ok to go back to civilian life. As far as they knew, I had just arrived to Mindoir from Earth a few days before that, so I didn't really fit with the rest of the colonists who had been attacked.

So there I was, sitting at reception, and talking to some sort of military liaison – he didn't give me a rank, just said he was there to answer questions, after introducing himself as Elliot Darsen. Oh boy, I hoped he had a lot of time.

"So, Roy, I know it's still very early, but you think about what you want to do now?"

"Kinda..." I muttered, looking at him. He was a massive man, easily half a foot taller than my own 6'2", military buzz cut, square jawed, weathered, and tanned face. His eyes looked tiny on his face, probably due to being deep-seated and furrowed under the leathery skin. Damn he was an impressive sight. I wondered if they wanted to make me feel reassured, or intimidated.

"If we can help you, we will," he continued. "What did you do back on Mindoir?"

"Oh... Just... You know, farm work and such," which was true, that's what I did for cash back in New Zealand while I studied. "Wanted to study agricultural engineering."

"Uh-huh. Bet we could find you something for that, Shanxi would be a good place."

I shook my head. "I can't go back to my old life," I said, and meant it in more ways that one. "I'm... Before that, what's going to happen to the kids?"

"Ah yes," Elliot said, taking a look at his datapad and sipping from his steaming mug. "Says here you rescued one of the kids. Shepard, was it?"

"Yeah."

"We'll be trying to find them foster homes. Shouldn't be a problem, news of the attack on Mindoir have spread quickly. There'll be plenty of people coming forward to help." He looked pointedly at me when he said that, and I wasn't sure whether he wanted to say he didn't need my help, or that there would be help for me.

"I'm doing okay. Just... Going to be hard to get into a routine, it's all so different. Back on Mindoir it was like... Dunno, living in the late 20th or early 21st century I guess."

He chuckled at that. "Yeah, so it seems."

"Can I stick around for the time being? I'd like to see them go somewhere safe, stick around until then, you know."

"Uh-huh," he nodded again. "I can understand that, but it's important you let them move on. You can't protect them forever, specially not just you alone."

"Why does everyone say that?" I said. It was starting to get very frustrating. "I just want to help them and make sure they're okay!"

"Because the best way to get past this is to get on with your life," he replied, not at all fazed by my little outburst.

I sighed. "I suppose you guys would know," I said, and he nodded in assent. "Can I stick around for a while anyway?"

"You want to think about what you'll do?"

"No, I... I kinda know already." Elliot raised his eyebrows, not saying anything but inviting me to continue. The answer was really simple, given what I knew was coming, there was only one thing I could do. "I want to join the military."

He nodded again. He did that a lot, I wondered if he didn't want to contradict me or if he just think all I said made sense.

"Not unexpected. Are you quite sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, you said you wanted to stick around. Think about it for a while."

"Okay. So, um, where can I stay in the meantime?"

"We'll find you something," he smirked.

"Thanks."

Elliot found me a room in the station; a small, twenty square meter spartan apartment I could claim as my own for the time being. My duffel bag – the backpack having long been discarded, thanks to the shotgun damage courtesy of the batarian – took a surprising amount of space on the floor, even though it had what little I had taken with me. The spare clothes I had, the Portal 2 track jacket (which, sleeveless as it was now, had turned into a vest), a pair of sneakers, the first aid kit (bolstered by a few tubes of medi-gel), and my hygiene kit. Plus some spare military rankless fatigues, one of which I was currently wearing. And my knife. Not a lot, really. I was travelling light.

I decided to go exploring. First time in space and all that, and let me tell you, Arcturus Station was absolutely amazing. There were over 40,000 people living there, so really, it was like a small city. Shops, restaurants, parks, it had it all. After a quick extranet search I found that there was even an antiques shop in one of the wings, so I decided to pay them a visit to try and get some credits.

The shop turned out to be a rather tiny corner shop; not very conspicuous, but absolutely loaded with stuff. The shelves were stacked sky high with items, most of them apparently military memorabilia, and some of it looking rather futuristic to me – yet still antique. The man behind the counter was a short, balding fellow with gray hair, a very round head, and eyes I could barely see behind a complicated-looking visor. He was concentrating on a small item I couldn't identify, bending down over the counter, and didn't even realize I was there until I walked right to the counter and coughed.

"Ah!" he chirped, nearly dropping the small item he was handling – an electronic gizmo of some sort – and starting in place. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Sorry," I smirked. "Couldn't help myself."

He raised the visor and chuckled. "Welcome to Wilson's. I'm Wilson. What can Wilson do for you kid?" he said, playing a well rehearshed piece.

"Well, I happen to be a bit short of credits, so I was wondering if you'd be interested in this." I raised my left hand, and took off my watch, offering it to Wilson.

He gave it a quick appraising look, and let a low whistle out. Yeah, it _was_ a nice watch back home. I drove a shitty twenty year old Honda, had next to nothing to spend after tuition and expenses, but dammit, I always wanted a nice watch, so a nice watch I bought as soon as I put my pennies together.

_I bet the coins in my wallet are considered antiques too. Damn, I should have gone for them first, _I thought.

Wilson had put his visor down over his face again, and was now examining the watch a lot more closely. He even gave it a few scans with an octopus-like device on the side of the counter.

"Where did you get this?" he finally said, putting the watch back on the counter and raising his visor. He didn't look at me, he had his eyes glued to it. "It may as well be new, but it all checks out, serial number and all. I can't believe a nearly two hundred year old watch is in such good condition. It even has an antique style battery in it."

"Family heirloom," I lied.

"Well," he spoke as he typed on his terminal. "It's a very nice piece. I can give you 70,000 credits for it right now, or if you want I can check for potential buyers and we can cut the sale instead."

I tried to figure out how much that was, but I had no idea what the credit to dollar exchange rate should be. Still, no matter how I put it, it was easily at least twenty times what I paid for the watch back home.

_Damn, should've bought a bunch._

"I'll take the cash now."

"Sure, just give me your chit and we'll be set."

"Uh... Yeah, about that. How... how does that work?"

He turned to look at me, and tilted his head up to glance under the rim of his visor. "You're joking, right?"

"Nuh," I said, shaking my head.

He took a moment to consider my answer. "You been living under a rock, kid? Are you from Drasta or something?"

"Drasta? No, sorry, don't know where that is. I'm..." I hesitated, do I give my Earth birthplace or go for Mindoir? Mindoir will probably be less suspicious. "I just got here from Mindoir."

I didn't think that news had travelled fast, and moreover, travelled fast to the heart of the Systems Alliance fleet. There was a moment where he looked like he was trying to figure out something about what I had said, and then his face opened up in surprise. Then the freaking _lost puppy_ eyes came.

"Oh. Oh damn, kid. Sorry, I didn't know."

"Don't sweat it," I said, raising a hand. "I made it out pretty easily. But, well, I'm a bit of a fish out of water here."

"No, no... Damn. Hold on, let me make a call."

He brought his omni-tool up, and soon had someone on the line who knew how to set me up. I got an account, got it synced with my omni-tool, and even got a credit chit to go with it, a spare Wilson had in the cash register. With a swipe, the transaction was done, and I was up 200,000 credits.

_Wait a minute._

"Woah, I thought we agreed on 70,000 credits."

"Yeah, well, must have made a mistake," Wilson said. When I gave him a skeptical look, he just shrugged. "I should be able to sell this piece for two hundred kay, so don't worry about it."

"I... Wow, I don't know what to say." I actually felt bad about it. I wasn't _really _from Mindoir after all. "If I didn't need the credits I'd say no, but..."

"It's not a charity case kid, I'll get the money back."

"Okay. Well, thank you then. Thanks a lot," I said, feeling rather flustered.

"You're welcome. Anything else you need help with?"

"No, no, that's... That's plenty of help," I closed my omni-tool and looked at the smiling old man. "Thanks again."

"Don't make a fuss," he replied in a good natured tone, waving me away. "Good luck kid."

After leaving the shop in a bit of a daze, I did a bit of digging through the extranet to find out how much 200,000 credits actually was. As it turns out, it's quite a bit, three or four years' salary for the typical manual worker in Alliance space. Not a lot if one lived in an expensive colony, but I wasn't planning on moving to Bel-Air anytime soon.

With that out of the way, I decided on one last stop. Another thing I found out, stationery of the future was a little different. Paper was – after decades of hearing about the "paperless future" – well and truly on its way to extinction. Only paper supplies I could find were from an "artsy" shop, and were definitely on the "holy freaking expensive" spectrum of price.

Still, with five thick notebooks, and five boxes of some kind of future-tec colour pens (made thick lines and promised no mess), I made my way to the kids. Each one of them received one of each, and instructions on what to do with them - after clearing said instructions with the shrinks. Joe and Shepard were the only ones that really seemed to be interested. Robert, a ginger boy about twelve years old, took the items without much conviction, and Liz, the blonde girl I only recently learned the name of, just muttered a single thanks when I put the items on the table in front of her, not moving from the chair where she was sitting.

The most heartbreaking was probably the last one. A girl about fourteen or fifteen, with short black hair and blue eyes, who had not said a word since she was rescued from the batarians. More and more she had withdrawn into herself, and now she just sat there, eyes lost in the distance. I had to put the items next to her bed, where she was sitting, because she wouldn't even acknowledge me.

It was a very long day. By the end of it, I just crashed on the hard cot in my spartan room ready to sleep for a whole century. After going around the station, I came to the conclusion there were only three kinds of establishments: food shops (groceries and takeaways), entertainment, and guns shops. Sure, there were others, but so few they may as well be a statistical error. There was one furniture shop in the whole of Arcturus, but I imagined they didn't get much in the way of business, given how half the stuff they sold wouldn't even fit in my tiny room, if I had had any interest in it at all. For what I could see, the point of everything there was to keep the marines fed and entertained during their downtime between missions, and that was it.

I bought a large box of preserved military rations – the cheapest way to feed myself I could find – and a hologuitar. It was a really cool gizmo, a small folding frame that uncurled into the shape of a classic guitar. The strings had no feedback, unfortunately, as they were holographic, but when folded it was incredibly compact and easy to carry. Sound came out of my omni-tool, or could be synced with headphones or the audio system of most standard alliance helmets.

All together I spent about five thousand credits. The rest could sit there until I really needed it.

Before I went to sleep, I decided to fire Marie a message. I flicked the omni-tool open and, laying on my cot, started typing.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Marie,<em>

_We're all settled down here in Arcturus. The kids are staying with the doctors for now, but I've been given an all-OK. Apparently your report was enough for them, so thanks for that. I'm staying in Arcturus for the time being, they've given me a tiny room I can crash in, and I want to stick around until the kids are all shipped to foster families. Hopefully it won't take long, the docs tell me they have a lot of offers from all over the Systems Alliance to help with that._

_I meant to ask you, the kids had been complaining about bad dreams, which really shouldn't be too surprising. Well, everyone but the quiet girl, you know, the short haired brunette. She still doesn't speak. I thought I'd try and help them with it, so I've been trying to explain to them how to have lucid dreams. I've got them all notebooks and pencils, and told them to write down everything they remember about their dreams as soon as they wake up. My idea was that if they could have some control of their dreams, they could turn them around. It's worked for me. But since I'm not a _shrink_, figured I'd ask someone who is!_

_How are things with you? Any more civilians that may join us? Arcturus is amazing, it's my first time in space... Well, since my trip to Mindoir I mean. I didn't see much of how I got to Mindoir. But this is something else._

_I have decided I'm going to join the military. I really don't see myself doing farm work and quietly studying when I know how bad things can be in the galaxy. The military guy they've got here to look after us told me to think about it and not to jump in too quick. I'll give it a few days, but my mind's pretty much made up._

_Take care,_

_Roy._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Surprised? Well, you shouldn't be! What else is one to do when thrown in the ME universe a decade and a half before things go down? Get some gun training and maybe try to figure out _who_ to tell what's about to go down. Because whoever you tell, you can bet there'll be shots fired in the aftermath.

**Mizuki00**, yeah sorry! :) Though the fact that you praise the story despite it not being your cup of tea is high praise indeed, thanks! And thanks to Archer and Lfan too! :D


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Roy,_

_I'm glad to hear you arrived to Arcturus with no further incident. It sounds like you're doing fine. Keep it up._

_I worry about Jasmine (that's the name of the quiet girl, we only just got the records back from Earth). We found out her entire family, from grandparents down, had moved to Mindoir two years before she was born. We found all of them dead. If she saw all of it happening, it may be a long time before she can recover. Immediate aid is very important, and I'm not sure I did enough for her._

_Lucid dreaming? It's really not my area, but getting the children to draw or describe their nightmares is not a bad idea. I assume you cleared it with the local doctors? Regardless, that will help for sure. I'm not too sure about the dreaming. Can you really control it when you know you're dreaming? It's quite amazing if you can!_

_Things are not great here. We have started rotating the troops, it's hard to take everything we've been finding. Unfortunately they are a bit shot on people with my field skills, so I'm staying for the time being. I could really use the break, there's just so many people... I'm not sure anyone knows what to do with all of them._

_Well, that was suitably glum. About joining the Alliance, your supervisor is right. Don't rush your decision, you could find yourself wasting some of your best years before finding out you really didn't want it in the first place._

_Be well._

_Marie._

* * *

><p>I had to give it to the Alliance, they moved fast. Three days after our arrival, and Joe was ready for shipping. A nice couple with two teenage kids of their own came to pick him up, and I managed to give him a last goodbye before they took off. The only reason I was surprised was because I didn't know Arcturus was literally a hop away from Earth, which was where those folks were from. We chatted for a bit, they seemed nice enough, and they were quite happy to give me their contact details and invite me to visit any time I wanted.<p>

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to take them up on that, but I was going to keep in touch. Omni-tool messaging was so easy and convenient, it'd have been a crime not to.

That day I headed out to the recruitment office. It wasn't particularly odd they'd have one in Arcturus, really, but there was a surprising number of people around. My paranoid self had me sitting quietly, virtually invisible in plain sight – a skill I had mastered through hard work and involuntary training, I could drop out of conversation and become part of the furniture in any situation – and listening. It wasn't hard to pick on the mood, it was all about Mindoir. The brutality of the attack, the fact that a human colony had been raided for slaves, the images of the brain-damaged, catatonic survivors – if they could be called that – had all made the rounds, and pissed off a lot of people. In a way, it felt good to see the response. Everyone treated me like I was _from_ Mindoir, so some of that was starting to seep into my subconscious, I guess.

Soon, it was my turn. I got to one of the several available desks, and was greeted by the sight of an old, tired, and very annoyed looking grizzled man. He was sitting in a chair that looked five sizes too small for him, and I swear I felt like he could have picked me up and broken me in half with his bare hands just as an afterthought.

_I better not piss him off_.

"Okay, tell me why you are wasting my time here," the man said. Great start, didn't even introduce himself.

"I want to join the army, sir."

"Yeah, I got that," he replied curtly.

I took a deep breath and decided to go for the expected, obvious excuse. "After the attack on Mindoir, I don't feel like I can just go back to quiet farm work."

"A farmer," the man spat. "You think a gun and some guts is all you'll need to go save the galaxy?"

That hit a little bit closer home than he knew, but it wasn't that I thought I could save the galaxy myself. Learning to shoot would help though.

"Not really, but I'd like to know what I'm doing next time a batarian comes shooting at me."

"Kid, when was the last time you even saw a batarian?"

I narrowed my eyes and looked at him straight in the eye. "Two weeks ago. On Mindoir."

I guess it was my fault, everyone had been treating me like they knew who I was, so I had expected the recruitment office to be the same. And then I realized I hadn't actually said I had been on Mindoir, I just said I wanted to join because of that – like plenty of people sitting there that day. So yeah, he was surprised, and so was everyone within earshot. To his credit, the man only looked surprised for about half a second.

"Right. You think this is some kind of charity, that we'll just roll the carpet out and give you a hug?" he said. I liked the guy, after all the whispers behind my back, and the shifty looks of pity, it was actually refreshing.

"No sir, I wouldn't learn a thing if you did that. I want to join, work hard, and become the best damn soldier I can possibly be."

He gave me a very long appraising look, not changing his expression. The whispers had already started, and after a rather loud "_poor guy_" from a woman right behind me, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. It sounds ungrateful, but I was really getting tired of the kid gloves.

"Welcome to the army, kid," the man finally said, and for a brief moment, I saw a lopsided smile play across his lips. The image was gone in a flash, and he was all business again. "Name?"

"Roy Morgan."

"Date of birth."

"October first, 1994."

He looked up from his terminal, and gave me a look that could have withered an oak. Then I realized what I had said.

"I mean 2150," I said, plucking a number out of thin air. _Was that right? Crap, I think that makes me one year too old._

It went more smoothly from there, and soon I was enrolled. With no tech expertise (or knack for it, I was fine with 21st century tech, but I was so out of my depth here I needed a buoy and a boat), no space experience, no biotics, the only place for me was being a groundpounder. So marines it was. I was also given a chance to choose which rotation I'd join, something I learned later on was somewhat irregular, and chose to join in a month. Four weeks to hopefully see all the kids off safe.

That wasn't going to happen.

* * *

><p>When I went to see Shepard the next day, I found her scribbling on her notepad, drawing furiously with the black marker. It looked like some sort of fanged terror, only with<em> two<em> pairs of yellow eyes.

"Hey Aliana," I said, sitting down at the table. There were three datapads around her, which I then knew were books. She was always reading, a way to keep herself looking busy, I found out later. It didn't surprise me, I knew from experience that it worked, although in my case it had been more of a _"thing I can do by myself away from everyone else"_.

"Hey."

I looked at the notebook. "Bad night yesterday?"

She stopped drawing to look at me. By the wide-eyed look she was giving me, mouth partly open, she was surprised. And more than a little angry. I had a closer look at her face for the first time that day, her eyes were quite red, and she was pale; paler than usual.

"What happened?" I said.

"You... You don't know?"

"No, what?" I said. When I looked around, I saw the other kids. Robert and Liz were there, even quieter than usual, she sitting on a chair, he on a mattress and curled up with his legs against his chest. "Where's Jasmine?"

Shepard looked down at her notebook, and a cold, sinking feeling seized my stomach.

"Ali," I said in a low voice. "What happened?"

"She... I went to the bathroom this morning, and she was there. On the floor. So much blood..."

_Oh crap._

I saw where that was going, so I sat down by Shepard, while she kept talking. "She got a piece of glass and just...Nobody helped..."

"Hey, hey," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm here, no-"

She snapped her head to turn right at me, and for a moment all that was left was anger. I let go of her shoulder almost immediately, although she didn't really say anything. She didn't have to. At that moment I saw the first glimpse of Commander Aliana Shepard. Her meaning was obvious, _"where were you?"_

The image was gone as soon as I moved my chair back to give her some space. Back to the worried, scared teenager.

"Aliana," I said, still failing to sound reassuring enough for her. In truth, I had no clue what to say. "That's not going to be you, okay? You know you'll be with people who'll take care of you." She didn't answer, so I opened my omni-tool, flicking through the menus until I got to the messaging app. "Look, this is the latest I've got from Joe, he just arrived on Earth."

I showed her the screen. It was a picture of Joe with his foster family, standing in front of what looked like an old-fashioned ranch, horses far in the background included. He wasn't smiling, but he was looking at the camera. It was the closest thing to happy I had seen on him in a while.

"I think his foster family is going to be great, don't you?"

Shepard looked away. "It's not my family," she muttered. It didn't take much effort to realize she wasn't talking about Joe's.

"No, but that doesn't mean they won't love you or take care of you."

"What about you?" she said.

Looking back, if I hadn't completely misunderstood her then, things would probably have turned quite different. As it was, my reply likely made things worse.

"I'm too old for that, I've got to strike it out on my own." She looked at me again. "It's not too bad, I've done it before. I like being by myself. I'm... actually, I'm joining the army. They're shipping me out to bootcamp in a month."

I saw her nod, but she didn't answer. It set the tone for the rest of the visit that day, she didn't want to speak much, and as I had been instructed, I tried not to push her. But I was there for her.

* * *

><p>Three weeks till bootcamp, and Robert had also been found a place to go. As it turned out, he had some distant relatives on Shanxi, and the military had been able to track them down. It was a pretty good place, that; a very safe colony and a decent place to live. As before, I managed to get the contact info, and the old couple seemed only too happy for me to keep in touch.<p>

With two weeks to go, Liz had also been found a place to stay. A member of the diplomatic mission to the Citadel, of all places. That one didn't go so well for me. I met them while I was there with Shepard, and she and her wife both seemed rather cold towards me. But they were very nice and friendly towards Liz, so that was all fine. Not that I had a say in the whole affair, but I really wanted to see them all do well. They also tried talking with Shepard, after blowing me off, and all they got for their troubles were very polite but short answers from behind a frozen, inexpressive half-smile.

So Shepard already had her "deal with unpleasant politicians" persona down pat. Good girl.

As it was a whole two weeks to go, I was quite positive they'd find a good place for Shepard. I spent my time preparing for bootcamp. Found a shooting range (hard, that, considering this was Arcturus station), found a gym, and very quickly found out that being reasonably fit as a civilian in the 21st century was very different from being fit enough for the Marines in the Mass Effect universe. I looked at the PFT that I was supposed to match, and damn near crapped my pants.

Which reminded me that I hadn't visited a doctor yet (how _I_ made that connection, you don't want to know). I was supposed to check on one before being shipped, and it was free too, so no reason to put it off.

There were several medical stations in Arcturus, and the one I had been sent to was the one that handled the "fresh recruits". So it didn't surprise me to see a very similar atmosphere in the waiting room to that of the recruitment office. A few of the people in the waiting room seemed to recognize me, which was a bit of a surprise; I expected everyone would have been shipped already.

It didn't take long for the doctor to see me. He was about my height, somewhat thin, with a bushy beard and a very thick Russian accent. I liked him already, Russian accents make everything cooler.

"Good, here you are. I'm doctor Belov, call me Olev," he said, extending his hand to shake mine. He then gestured at the stretcher in the room, and started looking through a datapad. "Well, Mr. Morgan, I hear you ship in two weeks. Have to make you ready. Why didn't you come when signed up?"

"Uh, I... I thought I had time, you know. This would be just a formality, I'm in good health."

"No, no, no good," Olev said, shaking his head. "Have to be better than good. You're in the army now!"

I stifled a laugh, and settled for humming the Status Quo song as he gestured for me to lay down. He put some sort of robotic arm over my head, and soon the machine was scanning me from head to toe. Completely unconcerned about interference, Olev handed me a datapad.

"Here, this the list of gene enhancements. Alliance standard is top two, if you want third, have to pay yourself. Alliance will refund you if you complete bootcamp for other two."

_Wait, what?_ "Hold on, gene what?"

"Gene enhancements! What, you live under a rock? Have them now, or you'll be sick as dog during camp," he finished, and laughed rather loudly at that.

"I thought there was some kind of moratorium on genetic engineering like that," I said dubiously.

"Naaaah, all this legal. You want something not on list, can't help you, but have cousin back on Earth. Good prices, but no guarantee."

I couldn't tell whether he was joking and just hamming up the "dodgy Russian" persona or not.

I decided not to inquire any further.

The list of genetic modifications available was surprisingly long, and the Alliance covered the cost of enhanced strength and enhanced stamina, but that was it. To tell the truth, I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of genetically modifying myself, specially as I had no idea how the technology worked. The notes next to them were quite clear though, without the standard mods, more than eighty percent of new recruits washed out in the first week. With them, success rate was over ninety percent. With an asterisk.

_*Ninety percent refers to the percentage of recruits able to graduate from bootcamp, further specialization may lower chances of successful development._

"I guess the two standard ones will do. Can I add the third later if I want to? Or more than three?"

"You can add later, more than three not recommended. Side effects can be very nasty, with few combination exceptions."

"Wait, side effects? Should I-"

"Naaaah," he waved me down. "Standard ones only have side effects on little girls. You're not a little girl, are you?"

I admit it, I laughed. For about a second.

"Wait, stop laughing and hold breath," Olev said.

He was looking rather intently at the holoscreen, and quite frankly, seeing my doctor look at my scan with that expression really took the laughter out of me. I did as instructed, and after a couple of seconds, the machine let out a double beep.

"What is it?" I said, taking that as a sign that the scan was finished.

"Don't know, you tell me," he replied, and turned the holoscreen towards me. The scan had highlighted my right lung, and there were a whole lot of red marks and lines all over it. It looked like a freaking treasure map.

"Oh, right. That."

"VI doesn't know, looks like old calcified tissue."

"Yeah, nasty infection. Wasn't pretty, but it got treated."

The look he gave me, I may as well have been an alien. And given how there _were_ aliens in the galaxy that I was pretty sure he didn't look at like that, it was even worse.

"Not good, will have to replace this," he said, shaking his head.

"REPLACE?!"

"Yes, flash-cloned organ. Very safe, will make you ready for bootcamp. Also, damaged disc will be fixed. Will take a sample now."

"How the hell are you going to replace my lung in two weeks?"

"Easy enough, you live under a rock?" he said again, and gave me a curious look.

"Something like that, apparently," I muttered.

He just laughed and gestured for me to pull my sleeve up. After a blood sample, and a whole bunch of vaccines I wasn't up to date on, he gave me a slap on the back to send me on my way, and told me to be back in three days – and not a day longer, or the transplant wouldn't be properly finished before I had to go.

I had promised Shepard we would go watch a vid, so I set off towards the psych ward. Ever since we had arrived, that was all we had done: watch vids (I found out _Fleet and Flotilla _was a soap opera the likes of which I hadn't seen since _Eastenders_), listen to music (and turned out that Shepard's taste for godawful techno music was already in place), I brought my guitar from time to time (which she seemed to enjoy, even though all my repertoire was hopelessly out of date; seriously, I don't care how far in the future we were, how can anyone _not_ know Bad Company?), and in general we didn't speak much at all. I was the one to start most of the conversations, and even though I didn't have much success, I still tried. I was still trying to find a book that she liked that I'd be able to recommend, our tastes in literature didn't seem to cross much either.

The one thing we never could talk about was family. Every so often she'd slip up and say something about a member of her family doing this, or liking that, and she'd immediately clam up, walls up and all. If I tried to follow up, she'd always retort to telling me to speak about my own family if I wanted to say something.

But little by little, she was getting more comfortable with my company. In a more _normal_ way, if there is such thing.

That day, as I walked though the door, one of the doctors at the clinic stopped me.

"Ah, Morgan, I was waiting for you," he said. He was a man in his mid thirties, black short hair with a splash of white here and there, thick eyebrows, brown eyes, a large, sharp nose, and always wore a pair of glasses. I knew damn well that eyesight problems were easy to correct with modern technology, so he only wore them because he wanted to. I think he thought they added to his feigned sense of superiority.

"Doctor Kay," I said as a greeting. The guy was called Brian, but I never used his first name. He didn't particularly like me, so the feeling became mutual.

"Care to join me?" He gestured towards the seats by reception, so I shrugged and walked with him. Once we were both seated, he took a deep breath and turned to look me straight in the eye. Unusual, he never looked straight at you, one of the reasons I didn't trust him. "We found a foster family for Shepard. Good couple with a kid of their own. They live in Demeter, very nice place."

"That's great," I said.

"Only Shepard doesn't seem to want to go. In fact, it's not the first time she's blown off a possible place for her to go."

I blinked a few times. "Okay, so what do you want me to do?"

"I normally wouldn't ask unqualified personnel," he said, and the way he sighed made clear exactly what he meant with that little quip. "But since you seem insistent on keeping her here, I thought you could talk sense into her. You are leaving for your bootcamp in two weeks, so you can't take care of her."

"I'm not stopping her," I replied, annoyed.

"Not that we could prove it, anyway," he retorted.

The only reason I didn't punch him in the face was that the reply had been so unexpected, I didn't know what to say. I settled for standing up and leaving without saying a word.

I found Shepard in her usual spot, reading a book. Whenever I came to see her, I'd find her reading a book. I knew she read so much because it made her look busy. People don't bother you if you look busy with a datapad in your hands.

"Hey," I said. She didn't look up. "Aliana?"

"Are you here to tell me to leave too?" she finally said, not looking up from her datapad.

It took me a moment to process that. "You saw me with Doctor Kay," I said, and sat down on a chair across from her.

"I'm not going," she muttered, curling up further into her chair.

"Ali," I said softly, and as usual, that caught her attention. Everyone called her Shepard, a few people used her first name, and I was the only one that ever called her that. "You can't stay here forever. You need a stable family to-"

"They're not my family!" she retorted, interrupting me.

"No, they're not. But if they are good people, then you will be better off than here by yourself. I don't know anything about your family, but-"

"I don't know about yours either," she snapped.

Shepard's little retort didn't surprise me at all. Forced as it sounded, I recognized it for what it was. Defensive, deflecting away from something she just didn't want to talk about. She did it a lot. I wondered whether that was my fault, I kept expecting Commander Shepard, and finding only Aliana Shepard, teenage survivor of Mindoir.

"Okay, fair enough," I said. My answer startled Shepard, it had taken so long for me to speak I don't think she expected me to. "What do you want to know?"

In the space of three seconds I saw pretty much everything go through her face. Surprise, doubt, fear. She looked like I had sucker punched her, and now was cornered on the ropes.

"It's fine. Go ahead. I'm not setting you up or anything." I waited, but she didn't say anything. "Can you give me a little trust?"

"I... I guess."

"So," I smiled, relaxing back in my chair. "Where do you want to start?"

Shepard shrugged. "What were they like?"

"Dysfunctional," I deadpanned.

She raised her eyebrows, and leaned forward to look more closely at me. "Dys... functional?"

"Oh yeah." I raised my hands, and used my right's index finger to count the fingers on my left. "I was the youngest of three siblings." Count one. "My father hated me," count two, "mostly because my mother, who was an alcoholic with a gambling problem, cheated on him and had me," count three. "My sister treated me like crap, and beat me up regularly until I got to be too big for her to really hurt me, although she never got tired of verbally demeaning me every chance she had," count four, "and my brother beat me up whenever my sister pissed him off, which was pretty much constantly." Count five.

By the time I was done, Shepard was giving me such a weirded out look I couldn't help but chuckle. Which only seemed to annoy her.

"That's not funny."

"No," I agreed, still smiling but with no humor behind it. "But it's all true." I wasn't looking at Shepard now, just had my eyes focused on the table in front of me. "Not funny at all. Really, finding myself in freaking Mindoir as far away from them as possible? Just perfect. Of course, I had to show up when the batarians came." I realized what I was saying, and looked up at Shepard, my smile disappearing. "Sorry."

Neither of us said anything for a while. I was waiting for her to ask again, but not particularly relishing the prospect.

"Why did your sister beat you up?" she finally said.

Of all the things, that was what she was focusing on? Come on!

"I don't know, I never asked her," I replied, shrugging. "Because she was-" mental check, no cursing, "-evil, because she was frustrated with my mother, because we rarely saw _their _father, because she could... Beats me." I wasn't looking for a pun, but chuckled at it anyway.

Shepard just lowered her gaze, and started wringing her hands together.

"Not what you were expecting?" I said.

"No."

At that point, I was convinced that nothing would happen unless I pushed Shepard a bit. Maybe that was what she was waiting for, I always had the feeling she was waiting for _something_ whenever an uncomfortable conversation between the two of us happened.

_If only I had a clue what I'm doing..._

I reached over the table and took her hands in mine. Immediately, she looked up at me. For some reason, I thought she looked scared. Not of me. I didn't know what of.

"Ali, whatever you're afraid of, you can talk to me."

She made a show of gulping, her eyes looking away. Twice she opened her mouth to speak, but she didn't make a single sound. All she did was press on my hands harder and harder. But I didn't flinch, and just waited her out. I didn't want to push her any further, and didn't want to venture a guess at what she was afraid of. There were too many possible things in that list. Way too many.

"I... I don't..."

She looked at me, and I raised my eyebrows inquisitively.

_Come on Shepard, I know you can. Go ahead._

"I don't know where..."

"You don't know where to start?" I offered. She nodded. "Why don't we start somewhere easy? What were they like?" I said, bouncing the easy question back at her.

"I don't know. Normal?"

I probably shouldn't have, but I let out a chuckle at that. She looked at me again, and there was some hint of anger behind her insecure exterior.

"Ali, I wouldn't know normal if it fell out of the sky and punched me in the face. Actually, scratch that. I _may_ see that as normal then."

She offered a weak smile back, but still took her a while to get going. Once she did, and with a deep breath, it started. Like a dam had been broken, it all started pouring out.

I learned about her life in a farm colony, left of nowhere and past the double end of the Galaxy. You'd think that a century and a half in the future, things would be a lot different, but it was all so familiar to me, it was easy to fall into the narrative. Early mornings, long hours. She loved going to feed the cows in the cold winter mornings; they'd all come to her as she unloaded the silage, some of them even licking her arms as she did. She got lost once when she was younger, ran off to the forest and ended up too far for her short self to see the house, and when she started crying in the middle of a paddock, a whole bunch of cows came to see what was wrong; kept her safe until her parents found her. Or that's what she remembered.

She also told me about her father. How he was always the first one up, cooking breakfast for the family. How he ran a barbecue every other Sunday for all the neighbours, which being farms meant some really far away people. How she always had a huge rack of ribs her dad made for her just the way she liked them. How he'd fall asleep in the sofa in the evening and would have to be gently coaxed to go to bed. How he didn't like any of the modern automations many other farmers used, because he liked the "human touch" in his work. And a dozen other little things.

And she told me about her mother. How she was a teacher in the small rural school. How she would never eat beef, because of the cows they kept on their dairy farm. How she always made sure the house was full of flowers, and made it smell so nice. How she giggled like a teenager whenever her dad would whisper something in her ear. How she was always humming, and when she wasn't humming, she was singing.

Then there was her little brother. This she was very careful to bring up, and the way she looked at me, it took me a bit to realize it was because of what I had told her about my own sister. But she told me about all the trouble the two of them got into. That she loved his imagination, and how the world was so much better when seen through his eyes. And how much she loved him, and how much she missed him. Him, and all her family.

It was all so disjointed, no sense or order in her memories. She laughed, cried, and both of them at once; it was everything she had been bottling up.

And I found out what she had really been afraid of. In a lull of the conversation, after what seemed hours talking – which it was – and us sitting in an easy silence for several minutes.

"Lana," I said. Oh yeah, that was another thing I found out. Everyone called Shepard, Aliana, or, in the case of her parents and most of her family, Lana. The _only_ one that ever called her Ali (stress on the _A_, just like I did) was her brother. So it startled her quite a bit when I sounded just like him. "Are you feeling better now?"

She shook her head, not looking up.

"Not even a little bit? Isn't it better to remember them like this?"

"No... I... I don't want to lose them."

It took me a few seconds to process that. It made more sense later on, but at the time, it just didn't click. She was afraid that talking about them, sharing her pain, it would made it feel real. Like her family wouldn't really go away if she didn't talk about them ever again.

"You won't. As long as you remember them, you won't lose them." It was a bit lame, but it was all I could think of.

She bit her lower lip and nodded, her eyes stubbornly fixed on the table as a few tears streamed down her face. She didn't put any resistance when I pulled her towards me in a hug, and let her weep on my shoulder.

It was the last time I ever saw Shepard cry.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Well... What can I say. We know from the in-game information that the Alliance people who participated on the Mindoir defence all suffered substantial psychological damage. For the kids that survived it, it had to be a lot worse. Not the happiest chapter I've ever written.

Oh yeah, and I _really_ hope you were hearing a thick Russian accent when reading Olev's lines, because I absolutely do. Dodgy Russians are awesome :D

**Mizuki00**, yah, I'll likely have chapters covering bootcamp and such, and Roy's adventures. There will be quite a bit going on before we get to the "game timeline", so to speak, even if it'll be substantially altered! :)

**Archer83, **I admit it, I laughed at that scene. Roy has _other_ plans for Shepard (although there's that saying about the best laid plans of men and mice), but if I get the chance for something like that to happen, it likely will! :D

And of course, thanks for the faves, follows, and specially reviews and thumbs up!


	5. Chapter 5

Spending the whole night talking with Shepard about her family was probably the best excuse to engage in voluntary insomnia I had ever thought of. She finally agreed to accept one of the many offers of adoption she had received, and in return I promised I'd never go away. Arm or not, I'd always keep in touch, and she could count on me.

So, the following morning I was saying goodbye to her as she boarded her shuttle. She had taken the offer from one of the families that had wanted to adopt her, as she had promised, but she hadn't even bothered waiting for them to show up. That was one thing I came to understand about her: once she made up her mind about something, she'd go for it without any hesitation. Whatever it took. And the reapers help whoever tried to get in her way.

She was off to Eden Prime. The family in question lived somewhere there, and were rather well off too. The fact that it _was_ Eden Prime gave me a chill, but I couldn't really say anything. By the time the attack on Eden Prime came, _if_ it ever came, she'd be old enough that hopefully she'd be somewhere else – scratch the _hopefully_, I'd make damn sure she was. I was planning on trying to convince her to go to college. Somewhere on Earth. Safe enough for the time being.

Ideally, it wouldn't come to that. I had a lot of work to do.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Marie,<em>

_Sorry I've been out of touch lately. A lot has happened in the last few days, and... Well, I've been a bit distracted, let's put it that way. Crappy excuse, I know._

_How have you been? Have you been rotated out of Mindoir yet? The news have been rather tight-lipped about the attack, nothing new that I didn't know already by the time I came here. I don't know about you, but if I never get to set foot on that place again, it'll be too soon. Then again, who knows where they'll send me._

_Oh yeah, I should mention, all the kids are now shipped off. Not sure if you heard. Joe's off on Earth, a nice family took him in, they've got horses and a ranch. I think he's going to like it there. I'm attaching one of the pictures they sent me, he doesn't look exactly happy, but he's at least looking up from his feet. Robert's been sent to Shanxi to live with some relatives the alliance managed to find. All I've heard from him was that he's back to school now, but not much other than that. For what I've read from Shanxi, it's not a bad place, pretty safe colony world. Liz's at the Citadel, a couple from the diplomatic service have adopted her. I'm not sure how she's doing though, those two really didn't like me, and I haven't heard from her since. And Aliana just went off this morning to Eden Prime._

_I had a very long chat with Aliana yesterday. Turns out she was afraid of sharing anything about her family because she felt she'd forget them if she did. Does that make sense? I don't know, she finally opened up and told me a lot about them._

_As for myself, I'm off in a couple of weeks, but before then I have to get surgery! Yeah, turns out they're going to replace one of my lungs. Freaked me out.. Actually, I'm still freaked out, but the dodgy Russian doctor just laughed at my worries. So I have to go for surgery in two to three days, and should be enough time to get me up and running for bootcamp. And the gene mods too, don't forget those. It all feels so surreal._

_Sheesh, that was a lot of babbling. Anyway, I hope you're doing okay._

_Take care!_

_Roy._

* * *

><p><em>Dear Roy,<em>

_Oh my gosh, that's so good to hear from you! Great timing, I'll be in Arcturus tomorrow! We definitely need to catch up. I'll call you when I get there!_

_It's great to hear most of the kids all have homes to go to. There's a lot of orphans back on Earth, you know. What about Jasmine? Found her a place yet? Is she doing any better? We didn't find any more survivors. Well, other than... Yeah. A few of them have recovered a bit, with some therapy... No, I don't want to talk about it over mail. I wish I could see all the kids, but it's better that they're all somewhere better. Better the better!  
><em>

_Gosh, that sounded so down. No more down! It's all good stuff now, they've started to rebuild back on Mindoir, so it'll just get better!_

_You're having a lung replaced? What did you do to the old one? You're really going to join the military then, huh? Well, be careful and keep your head down. I don't want to lose you or anyone else from Mindoir._

_I'll call you tomorrow!_

_Marie._

* * *

><p>I read Marie's message when I was already in bed that night. Which was just what I needed, she didn't know about Jasmine, and sounded like she wasn't going to take the news well. Truth to be told, I wasn't sure whether I was looking forward to seeing her again or not. She was probably going to want to talk about Mindoir, and no matter what, she was still a shrink. Always digging for something.<p>

"Eh, I'll burn that bridge when I cross it," I muttered, powering the omni-tool off.

For the first time, I was going to bed without Shepard and the kids being the foremost thing in my mind. I had focused so much on trying to help them until they went somewhere safe, I wasn't quite sure what to do next. A thousand things were swirling inside my head. The reapers, the military, everything that was going to happen to Shepard.

Like hell.

Even if I hadn't met Aliana fresh out of Mindoir. Through the games, the galaxy did nothing to Shepard but chew her up and spit her out. The council, the Alliance, nevermind fucking Cerberus. Everyone used her, and threw her away when she started to become inconvenient.

_I'll figure out how to warn the galaxy about this. Just have to find the right person. Anderson, or Hackett maybe. I know where a lot of stuff is located, it can prove what I know. Even Cerberus. Heck, maybe Kohaku will help. The Illusive Man? Fuck, that's going to be a handful. Maybe one of the alien governments would be better, less chance of Cerberus fucking things up._

There wasn't that much time. Sure, it would be a good fifteen years before the invasion. But fifteen years, even if the whole galaxy went on the warpath, wouldn't be enough to beat the Reapers. Fifty thousand years per cycle, one billion years, there had to be tens of thousands of the fucking things. It'd probably come down to the Crucible.

I can't really remember what else I was thinking of, because I fell asleep. Thoughts are always very strange before sleeping.

The dreams, however, were a lot worse.

I remembered them clearly, I was lucid through most of it. I was somewhere familiar. It was New Zealand or Mindoir, probably a mix of both, the colour of the sky wasn't right for either. A very nice open area, people milling about, not doing anything in particular. Then the awful, awful scream, like it bore straight into my brain.

Then the sky was full of reapers. That was when I realized. I tried counting them, but I couldn't. Couldn't count straight, couldn't walk right. It was a dream.

_"All right fuckers, bring it on!"_

I was in alliance armor. I didn't know how it felt, or how it was supposed to feel. It was just what I needed. I didn't really remember the reapers landing, things don't always happen in the most logical fashion in dreams. What happened next was that the landscape was littered with reapers, and husks started pouring out of them. Hundreds, nay, thousands, of them.

Not that it mattered. Omni-blade in hand, I just charged at them with reckless abandon. It wasn't my first lucid dream after all.

I realized later it wasn't a dream at all. It was a nightmare. No matter how many I killed, they kept coming. I couldn't stop them, I couldn't save anyone in my dream, humans, faceless humans being devoured by the horde of synthetics. I woke up when I heard the anguished cry from Shepard. Not Commander Shepard, but the only Shepard I knew. The young, sixteen year old kid from Mindoir.

In the movies, people always wake up from nightmares by jumping off their beds, scream being optional, suddenly wide awake and realizing what a nightmare they had had. Reality is a little different. There was no scream, I didn't jump out of bed; but my heart was beating in my chest like it wanted to escape through my throat, and I was breathing like I had finished running a marathon. And for the longest few seconds, I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't.

_Goddamn Reapers..._

* * *

><p>After a shitty night's sleep and a worse morning feeling sick, I wasn't feeling at my best. I spent all day just thinking, trying to remember everything I could about the Mass Effect timeline and writing it down to my omni-tool. I didn't even eat anything until my omni-tool beeped to warn me of a message, and I realized it was late evening.<p>

_Hey! Wher R you? We R at the Flyboy waiting for yo!_

_Marie!_

"Shit," I muttered. I saved the notes I was writing, put a password on them, and fired up the messaging app.

_Hey Marie!_

_Sorry! Kinda lost track of time. I'm going to grab a quick shower, do they do food up at the Flyboy? I haven't eaten at all today!_

_Roy._

I hopped in the shower and wasn't even wet when Marie's reply came through.

_Just come! Well get U sumthin!_

Her lack of spelling skills was rather amusing, but I did get my shower before throwing my clothes on (my old jeans, meaning 21st century old, military green t-shirt, and plain futuristic shoes, since I didn't think my hiking boots would be appropriate), and buggered off.

The Flyboy was a kind of weird bar/pub mix, and that night it seemed more of a bar. Loud music, lots of shouting, and what looked like a lot of marines on shore leave. I was quite relieved to see I was slipping right in unnoticed, until a very familiar voice shouted over the hubhub of the bar.

"ROY!"

All I saw was a whirl of black hair before I had a very chirp Marie latched on my neck. She lunged at me so hard that I had to stagger a couple of steps back, and ended up having to swirl around with her in my arms to avoid falling down, which may have been what she intended in the first place.

That was drawing far too much attention for my liking, but she wasn't letting go. I did get her to take a step back, her hands still latched on the back of my neck.

"It's so great to see you!" she said. She reeked of booze, her make-up was smeared, and she looked like she could barely stand. Even in the low light of the bar I could tell she looked... It was hard to put into a single word. Weary. Tired. Sad. She was trying way too hard to sound happy, but it didn't really reach her eyes.

"Marie, it's-"

*GRRRROOOOWL*

Yeah, I hadn't eaten since the day before. I spent all night talking with Shepard, the day just writing down all I could about the timeline, and now here I was. So sue me.

Even though it was quite loud inside the bar, Marie actually heard it. Or maybe felt it, since she was holding on so close to me. There was this very uncomfortable pregnant pause, and then she started laughing. For a wonder, this time it _did_ sound like a happy laugh.

"Any chance we can get some food here?" I said.

"Naaaah, lemme go tell 'em. I'm gonna show you the... Best! Ribs in the station," she slurred. With a pat on my chest, she stumbled back and went to speak to a group of marines sitting at one of the tables. I didn't go with her, just watched from a distance. They didn't seem particularly boisterous, or loud, or drunk for the matter. One man and three women.

A few minutes later, and after a couple of loud catcalls from the female members of Marie's troop – more in jest at her than me, luckily – she was dragging me out of the Flyboy, leading me by the hand with a quick but unsure step.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Relay Rob's!" Marie replied enthusiastically. She must have looked like a woman on a mission, because everyone we came across took a quick step out of her way.

After only a few minutes and several mysterious turns (to the point that I'm sure we crossed in front of the Flyboy a second time, though Marie didn't seem fazed by it), we arrived at Relay Rob's. It looked like an old style diner, including miniskirt waitresses and neon sign (holographic, no buzzing sounds).

"Welcome to Relay Rob's!" Marie said, about a millisecond before one of the waitresses did.

"Table for two?" the waitress said, pointedly ignoring the drunk woman and addressing me.

"Yeah," I said.

I subtly pulled Marie by the hand to get closer, before she went off and did something silly, or expensive. I had to then grab her by the waist when she nearly fell over. Okay, so maybe I hadn't been that subtle. She reciprocated very quickly, which made for a very embarrassing walk to our table.

"Special of the day is the T-bone steak. 16 or 32 oz.," the waitress offered. She didn't give us a menu at first, and only when she saw I wasn't doing so, she flicked the holoprojector on the table to show us the menu.

_Oopsie. Embarrassing._

Marie flicked quickly to the back of the menu and to the drinks page. "I'm gonna have a Schutz raspberry vodka."

"No food?" I said.

"Naaaah, I'm not hungry,"

The waitress took the order without a single word, and then turned to me. "Sir? Do you need a minute?"

"Nah. I'll have the T-bone, the big one," I said, flipping back to the start of the menu. "What does it come with?"

"Your choice of two sides," she replied, flipping the menu to the appropriate page.

"Okay. Steamed vegetables and salad then. And if you can bring some wedges and some dips now it'd be great, because I'm starving."

"Sure thing. Anything to drink?"

I made a quick check of the back of the menu, and chose a non-alcoholic at random. "Uh, a large Astro-fizz will do."

That got me _the looks _again. The waitress recovered first, jotting it down on her datapad and walking off. Marie took a couple of seconds longer, and then she started laughing again.

"I'm glad I'm entertaining you," I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. I _fucking_ hate when people laugh at me.

"It's just..." she giggled, and took a deep breath to compose herself. "That's a kiddy's drink."

"I like kids' drinks. They get all the best stuff. Heck, have you seen he kids' menu?" I flicked through the holomenu until I got to the right part. "Wait, this one comes with a toy! I think I'm going to change my order."

I didn't think it was that funny, but Marie was drunk enough that she was giggling all the way through. And by the time she had calmed down, the waitress was back with our drinks, and she started laughing all over again. As it turned out, the large Astro-fizz was pretty damn big, and came in a plastic with toy ships and planets drawn all over it. I wondered what exactly they were doing with kids in the future if they were happy to feed them that much sugar. And golly, did the Astro-fizz have sugar.

But I wasn't distracted enough to notice how eagerly Marie drank her own vodka mixer. By the time I was done with the breadsticks, she was on her second (and let me tell you, I made very quick and short work of those). And by the time I had finished the wedges, she was on her fourth.

While I ate, I had given Marie a quick update about the kids. I had had letters from Joe and Robert, or rather, their adoptive families. Joe specially, I had gotten several pictures from the ranch, and although he wasn't smiling in any of them, he looked more lively than he had been at the station.

"Oh my god, he's so cute," Marie chirped, looking at the holo on her unsteady omni-tool. She was slurring the words quite noticeably by now.

"If you say so," I replied with a smirk. "Haven't gotten anything from Liz though, I don't think her adoptive family liked me very much."

"Their loss," Marie retorted. "And what about your little sister?"

"Marie," I said, dragging the _e _and getting a laugh from her. "She's not my sister."

"I know, I know. What about her?"

"She just left, a family on Eden Prime is taking care of her. She should be arriving tomorrow."

"That's great!"

The waitress arrived then with my steak, and I really couldn't see anything else. It looked awesome, and given that, other than the few appetizers I had just eaten, I had been living off military rations since I arrived to the Mass Effect universe, I was almost drooling like an idiot. Vat-grown stuff is the standard for the military, although Arcturus, being big and close enough to Earth, made it possible to get fresh food and produce.

"And here's your drinks," she said, putting down another vodka mixer for Marie, and a refill for my Astro-fizz.

Marie was about to reach for her mixer when I grabbed the bottle myself, putting it just beyond her reach.

"I think you've had enough," I said. As if it had been a signal, the waitress made herself scarce, while Marie looked at me with a seriously astonished expression. She smiled and reached for the bottle, but I pulled it back. At that moment, a flash of anger ran through Marie's face. She half-stood and snatched the bottle off my hand.

My interest on my steak waned considerably. The look on my face must have been eloquent enough, because she sat down and tried to put a nervous smile to cover it up.

"I'm fine," she said, tittering nervously, and giving the bottle a sip. "But anyway! What about Jasmine? She's still here, isn't she? Poor girl."

And I was _just_ about to sink my fork in the steak, too. For a moment, all I could see was Shepard's face that day. The accusation behind that look. _Where were you?_

"Roy? Whass the matter?" Marie said. Or at least I thought she said. Between her slurring and the fact that I wasn't paying attention, she could've said anything. "Something's happento her."

"She's dead," I said, my voice chocking out. I had my eyes fixed on the steak now, but it didn't really matter. I wasn't looking at it. "She took a piece of broken glass and... Shepard found her. I never saw it. She just told me there was a lot of blood."

I don't know how long we just sat there in silence. I only broke out of it when I heard a muffled sob. Looking up, I saw Marie covering her mouth with both hands.

"I... I'm sorry..." she muttered, and stood up far too fast. She nearly fell over, probably would have if I hadn't shot up myself to hold her steady. After a moment, she pulled away. "I'll be... I'm sorry..." she started to stumble away, and gestured for me to stop when I started to follow. "I'll be right back."

With an uneasy step, she stumbled her way to the restroom, and left me dumbfoundedly behind. And very awkwardly standing by the table.

One very quick look around, and I sat down again. Yeah, everyone was looking at us. Or as it was the case, me, because Marie had left me hanging. Not that we weren't getting looks already, but Marie's loud, drunken outbursts weren't too much out of place. Marines on shore leave are loud anywhere and everywhere.

I prodded the steak with my fork, quite uninterested. I waved at the waitress, and asked her to pack it up to go. I really didn't feel like sitting down and having dinner anymore. A few minutes later, she brought my steak and vegetables back. A few more minutes later, and Marie still wasn't back. I gave her some time, then some more time, and so on until I thought she had simply fallen through the toilet.

"Marie," I called, knocking on the ladies' room. "Are you okay?"

The answer came through loud and clear. "Leave me alone!"

"Great," I muttered. It was all familiar enough, I wondered whether she'd swing back immediately or wait until morning to do so. I didn't have to wonder long, the door opened and she poked her head out. Her eyes were reddened, and her breath smelled strongly of mint. "I'm sorry. Just... gimme a minute."

With a sigh, I went back to wait for her at the table. Sure enough, she did come back, sporting a huge smile and as if nothing had happened. The fragility of the smile, however, was hard to miss, at least for my trained eye.

"You done?" she said, and didn't give me any time to answer. "Come on! Lessus go!"

She didn't sit down, just tried to drag me by the arm, but I convinced her to give me enough time to pay the bill – not forgetting to give the waitress a good tip for putting up with us – and off we were, carrying my dinner and on a mission to find the Flyboy again.

The bluster from the place guided us much more easily this time, and with Marie firmly attached to my arm, we made our way in. As the hour grew late, the place had filled more, and now it was jam-packed. Marie's companions waved at us, and when she waved at them, she pushed me towards them while she made her way to the bar.

"Hey hey, look what the kitten's brought," the only man said, a large, broad-shouldered fellow with crop-cut black hair, thick eyebrows, a square head large enough to double as a docking station for a frigate, and a very loud voice.

There were four of them total. Two were women I could hardly tell apart, both with short black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a goofy grin that gave them deep dimples on the sides of their mouths. They weren't identical enough to be twins, but they had to be sisters. Last one was a blonde, hair held in a bun which reminded me of in-game Ashley's (as it turned out, Alliance regulations were to keep hair short, or held in a bun like that when in uniform). She had a gaunt appearance, with sunken cheeks and a bony lower jaw.

"The kitten?"

"Marie," the two sisters said at the same time. They started laughing when I looked at them.

"Do they do that often?" I asked the man.

"All the freaking time," he replied. He offered me his hand. "Name's Wilson."

"Roy," I replied, shaking his hand. He had a hell of a mitt, and nearly crushed my hand in his.

"These two are Jill and Melanie," he said.

"And which one is which?" I said, nodding at them.

"That's Jill," Melanie said, pointing at her sister.

"And that's Melanie," Jill added, returning the pointing.

It all had the feeling of a rehearsed set piece. Me? Given the lowish light and the fact they were all wearing the same, I had a hard time telling them apart.

"Zay," the blonde woman offered, together with her hand, which I shook. "Where did Marie find you anyway?"

"Mindoir," I replied. I sat down at the table, and put the container in front of me, which quickly attracted the attention of Wilson.

"I don't think I saw you there," Zay said. "Who're you with?"

"Uh? No, I'm not with anyone. I was there during the attack."

_Here we go,_ I thought. But to my relief, their responses were a lot different from what I was expecting. The blonde and the twins looked at me more closely, with varying degrees of surprise, and even Wilson stopped demolishing the steak to look at me.

"That was you! I heard you killed ten batarians there," one of the sisters (Jill I thought) said.

"It was twenty!" the other one added.

"Five," I said. "Well, four, the last one was sucker-punched by Shepard, all I had to do was press the trigger."

"Not bad," Wilson said, nodding sagely and returning his attention to my (former) dinner.

"Fucking lucky," I replied.

"How did you manage?" Zay inquired.

Fortunately, I was spared having to give any explanations by the arrival of Marie. She stumbled onto the table with both hands full, and nearly dropped everything she was carrying onto our heads. She had a bottle of tequila in one hand, and a bowl full of lemon slices and six shot glasses in the other. There was a salt shaker in there as well.

"Oh hell no," I said.

"I'm baaaaack!" Marie said, sitting herself besides me. "Didya missh me?"

"Of course!" Jill said. Her sister was already working the tequila, and had lined up the six glasses.

"Not for me, thanks," I said.

"Wha? No way!" Marie protested. "We gotsa drink together!"

"I'm not doing shots, okay?"

"But... But..." Marie started pouting, and immediately the other three women made a sort of _uuuuuuh_ noise.

"You made her cry," Zay said.

"No..." My denial died on my lips when I saw she _was_ actually crying. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, but it very quickly changed to annoyed. Crocodile tears really don't do it for me.

I considered, seriously considered, getting up and leaving without a word. It would also save me from unpleasantness the next day. But after a brief internal debate, which as usual I won, I decided I could at least ride it out until morning. It didn't look like it'd take much to knock Marie out anyway, given how utterly drunk she already was.

So, because I hate myself, I raised one finger. "One shot. And I mean it. One."

As I expected, Marie's demeanour changed like a switch had been flicked. Tears dried up, the big smile returned, and she passed the glasses around. Or at least tried to, but when she started sloshing more of the contents out than she left inside, Jill took over, topping the glasses up.

Marie took the time to explain to me what I was supposed to do (which I already knew, but eh, kept her entertained), and up we went.

I hate tequila.

They did indeed try to get me a second one, but I did refuse. Completely. Marie cried a little, pouted some more, then made a show of huffing and puffing, and taking a second shot herself. After that, conversation naturally turned to – what else? – Mindoir. They started asking questions about how I made it out, how the fight went down, and I tried to answer them as simply as possible.

In truth, it wasn't a particularly impressive tale. I had caught the first batarian by surprise ("_I bet he had never seen anyone so unconcerned about __having __a shotgun pointed at his face, __except maybe a krogan_" was the way I put it), I was just lucky with the second ("_he apparently thought he could shoot me through his compatriot_"), the third never really had a chance ("_he was distracted shooting someone else, didn't realize I had two shotguns_"), the fifth was sucked-piped by Shepard ("_heh, I made a funny_"), and the only one that was a real fight was the fourth. Even then, I had been damn lucky. Through the whole thing.

As I spoke, Marie kept drinking, and kept trying to interrupt me. Not letting me speak. She didn't want to talk about Mindoir herself, but she didn't want me talking about Mindoir either.

"You wern't luck...ghy," she slurred at the end of my explanation. "You jush... kicked their ashes!" she giggled, and leaned on me, putting her hand on my chest. "My Roy'sh gunna be a marine!"

"Is that right?" Zay said, looking at me with an amused and slightly tipsy smile.

"At least going to try," I said. "Have to get through bootcamp first"

"Gotten the gene mods yet?"

"Not yet, I'm getting them tomorrow."

"Well, that's a hundred thousand reasons to get through bootcamp right there."

"A hundred and twenty thousand, actually."

She whistled. "Damn. That's inflation for you." She reached for the bottle of tequila, but to her disappointment, it was empty. "Well, ya better get through, I wanna see what you came out like when yer done," she said with a wink.

"Hey! Handshes off, he'sh mine," Marie protested. I stirred uncomfortably, getting out of her grip. She didn't seem to notice much. "Lesh go dance!"

"Ah, that's not going to work. I don't dance."

"Jeez, no drinking, no dancing, do you do anything?" Zay said.

"I'm great at keeping chairs warm," I replied. "And making balloon animals, but I'm not very good at that."

She shook her head, and whatever she was going to say next was interrupted when Marie stood up and dragged her away towards the dance floor. With a call for them to wait, the sisters took off after them, and soon it was just Wilson and I.

"Really kid, you ain't noticing the kitten purring?" Wilson said.

"Sure," I said. "She's drunk."

"Don't matter, she's been talking about you. You and your kids were the only ones to make it out of there."

"What about all the... well, the people with brain damage? They haven't recovered? None of them?"

Wilson shook his head. "Not one of them. The batarians took anyone who could be useful, even if a little _damaged_. The ones they left, well..."

I nodded, not taking my eyes off my empty shot glass. I kept twirling it in my hands, trying to resist the urge to throw it against the wall. It wasn't until I heard a commotion coming from the dance floor that I looked up. I turned to see Marie laughing on the floor, while Zay and the sisters were trying to help her up.

"How often does she get this drunk?" I said, already knowing the answer, but asking nonetheless.

"She's had a rough time lately, she's just getting her hair down."

_So, that's a _very _often then, _I thought, nodding.

Apparently Marie's little adventure had been enough to convince the girls that dancing was not the best idea, because they were back just a few minutes later. She was clearly unsteady, and pretty much fell on top of me.

"Royyyyy, I wanna dance with youuu," she said.

"I don't think you can do much dancing as you are," I replied. "Why don't I just take you home?"

"Ooh, forward, I like that," Zay said. She was going to say something else, but she shut up after I looked at her. That was a pretty damn poor joke.

"M'kay," Marie replied.

"Great, let's go." I stood, helped her up, and with her arm holding on to my waist for dear life, I waved the others goodbye.

"Thanks for dinner," Wilson said as I left. "Go get her tiger."

I rolled my eyes at him, and led Marie away. There _were _a few catcalls and comments as we made through the crowd, which didn't seem to annoy Marie as much as they did me. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Holding her firmly, we finally broke out of the bar, and into the empty station corridors. It was late enough that most decent folk were already in bed.

"So, where are you staying?"

"I wanna go with you..." she mumbled.

"Not a good idea."

She rubbed her head against my neck, and mumbled something I didn't get before insisting again. "Royyyy, I wanna be with you..."

"Not today." I said.

"Why do you hate me?" she sniffled.

_Oh for crying out loud, _I thought. _You can't be serious._

"Marie, I'm serious. No. Where do you live?"

"Fine," she replied, and pushed me away. "Jussh lemme here then." She stumbled two steps, and would have fallen down if I hadn't taken hold of her again. She tried to struggle, which only served to make both of us stumble then.

"Come on Marie, stop that," I said. She did, and grabbed me again. "Okay, fine, jeez. Let's go to my place."

She nodded without a word, and we started the not-so-long walk back. As she was, all I had to do was drop her in my bed, and she'd probably be asleep in a matter of seconds. I was amazed she was still conscious, given that she was already quite drunk when we met before, and with everything else she had put in her system. She really wasn't that big.

After what should have been a short walk, but became a somewhat long one due to our slow pace, we got to my apartment. We stumbled in with Marie trying to hug me, but luckily, all I had to do was take a couple of steps to drop her on my bed. My apartment was really just the size of a shoebox.

"Roy, cm'ere," she mewled.

"Give me a few minutes, gotta go to the little boy's room." I helped her up to the bed, took her shoes off, and tucked her in. She snuggled to the pillow without a complaint, although she did try to paw at me, and I left her there before retreating to the bathroom.

With nothing to do, I sat on the toilet, opened my omni-tool, and started an extranet search for military regs on alcohol abuse. Didn't take long to find what I was looking for. As it turns out, there were several places in Arcturus where I could go for help.

I just had to have it out with Marie in the morning. I _could _have been imagining things, maybe I just thought she had a problem because I saw the problem everywhere. In any case, we'd know in the morning. I just had this uneasy feeling, it was all the little things she did that I was so familiar with, and the fact that she told me how she had had trouble digging herself out of the hole after her tours of duty. I idly wondered which way she'd go when she woke up. Would she go for throwing things at me, or just trying to guilt-trip me somehow? I hoped for the former, my tolerance for emotional manipulation was very low.

Waiting, I spent almost an hour just browsing, without a peep from Marie. To make sure, I switched the lights off, and took a peek out the bathroom door. As I expected, Marie was fast asleep already, probably had fallen asleep in seconds after I tucked her in. I tiptoed out, and was about to leave the apartment when I head a small whimper. I stopped to listen, and after a while, another. I set the omni-tool to the dimmest setting, and approached the bed. Sure enough, it was Marie. Whatever she was dreaming, she was obviously very distressed about it. Whimpering, and crying too.

Much as that _did _hurt to see, there was nothing I could do. As she was, I didn't want to wake her up, just in case.

Without any more noise, I left the apartment, and made for one of the hotels in the station. It wasn't hard to find a room to spend the night. Not that I expected to get much sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> So... Yeah, pure OCs here. In-game, all we ever hear about the consequences of the Mindoir raid is how Lt. Zabaleta became an alcoholic and had to be sent to rehab (if you had the spacer background), but for what little bits I've gathered from codices, wikis, etc., the issues were very widespread among the alliance personnel that tried to stop the raid.

On a completely different note, Relay Rob's and the sugar-loaded Astro-fizz come straight from Raven Studios' most excellent series of fics: Cause and Effect, Newton's First Law, and Newton's Second Law. Now you know :)

**Mizuki00**, Aliana's sixteen, but she's probably acting a little less mature due to the trauma, so yeah, I can imagine how you can imagine her being younger. As far as bootcamp, etc., there will be chapters on it! ICT... Well, you'll have to wait and see, since things are going to happen way before that could become an option (muahaha!).

**Friaku, **thanks a lot! Hope I can keep the story interesting enough :D

**Archer83**, yeah... Ali's kinda messed up at the moment, and you know how when you're down it seems as if the Universe conspires to keep you down and not let you dig yourself out? Something like that.

Thanks everyone for reviews, reads, faves, and all the good things! Early release this time, because I'm a little stuck at 49,993 (planetary war chapters are giving me some trouble), so I focused on My Effect a little bit more to get the ol' neurons churning. Next time, expect a change of pace! :)


	6. Chapter 6

I spent the night at one of the station's cheap hostels, or more like, just waited it out until morning. And when morning came, probably a bit too early for Marie, I made my way back to my apartment. I had barely had any sleep, I had woken up after my short rest with a start and my heart beating hard in my chest, but after a few minutes I couldn't remember anything of what I had been dreaming about. Lovely.

As soon as I opened the door and stomped in, Marie started to stir.

"Hmmmm... Mornin'," she mumbled, and winced when I turned the lights on. My crappy little apartment didn't have any windows, after all. Not that day and night cycle were particularly noticeable inside the station.

When I didn't answer, she looked at my face, and even in her addled state she noticed my less than happy expression.

"Oh god," she mumbled. "How bad was it?" She looked down at herself, and saw she was still dressed with the clothes from the night before.

"I've seen worse," I replied, trying to sound neutral. But yeah, I had seen worse. I made to the kitchenette, filled a glass with water, and brought it over to her.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." I looked at her drink, and when she was done, she looked at me. I sighed. "Look, why don't you go to your apartment, grab a shower, and we can have a chat?"

She muttered something I couldn't hear, but she nodded and stood up. She hesitated for a bit, trying to say something but not coming outright and saying it.

"What?" I prompted.

"No... nothing. I'm... Okay, are you mad at me Roy?"

I sighed and sat at the edge of the bed. "No, I'm not mad at _you,_" I replied.

Marie caught on my stressing the last word. "Who are you mad at?"

"Let's talk later, okay?"

I finally got her to agree and leave, and I took the chance to tidy up the apartment. Going by the smell, Marie had had a disagreement with her dinner at some point during the night. I tried to wipe everything as thoroughly as I could with bleach, and left the fans running – the closest thing I could get to opening the windows. I was starving, but there was no way I was going to have breakfast in there, so I went hunting for a place to get some pancakes.

An hour later my omni-tool pinged; Marie wanted to know where I was. I flicked back a message to get where her apartment was, and told her I'd be there shortly. It was a good thing I was done with my breakfast, because I'd have lost my appetite rather quickly. Again.

"Roy," she greeted me at the door of her apartment, a small smile on her face. Her hair was still damp, she was in fresh, boring military clothes, and damn but she smelled good.

"Hey," I replied.

She gestured for me to go in, and we both sat at the table by the kitchenette. It was a small apartment, although it was bigger than mine. At least big enough to have some guests.

"Tea?" she offered, filling a mug.

"I'm good, thanks."

After taking a single sip, she put the mug down and looked at me again. The smile was gone. "Roy, about last night. I just wanted to have a little fun, and it kinda got out of hand. When you told me about Jasmine, I..."

"I think you have a problem," I said, interrupting her tirade. I winced internally at the harshness of my words, that wasn't what I had wanted.

"Come again?"

"What you did yesterday wasn't a one-off, was it?"

Marie looked surprised at first, but she covered it up quickly. "Well, I've had a few crazy nights before, sure. I still don't know what you mean."

"Come on Marie, at least don't take me for an idiot." I deadpanned. "When I saw you yesterday, you were on a mission to get drunk, and the way you reacted when I suggested you had had enough..."

"What, I'm fine!" she snapped, and grimaced slightly when her outburst reminded her of the hangover she was dragging.

"Really. So if I go and, dunno, search through the kitchen or your bedroom, I'm not going to find bottles, full or empty, or probably a mix of both, am I?"

"No, of course not!"

I looked at her, and stood up without a word.

"Come on Roy, stop that! What's gotten into you?" she said.

I ignored her, and made for the kitchenette, opening doors and drawers. Marie shot to her feet, but she didn't stop me before I found her stash. Sure enough, several bottles of vodka were stashed in one of the cabinets, some of them empty.

"You were saying?" I said, as Marie pulled me back to face her.

"So what? Maybe I like a drink once in a while!" she snapped. "Just because you have a problem doesn't mean others do, Roy. That's called projection, and-"

"Oh please," I said, interrupting her. "I'm very familiar with all that crap. I've seen enough of it."

She took a step back and looked at me, a small smile on her face. After a long silence, she went back to her seat before speaking again. "Roy. There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe you should tell me what it is you think you see, and why. Did you have that kind of problem? Someone close to you maybe?"

I felt my heart racing, and a very real surge of anger. Moreso due to the brief flash I saw on Marie's face, she looked rather happy that she had struck a nerve. Probably thinking it was a way out for her.

Several deep breaths later, I had calmed down.

"Marie," I said, taking a seat again. "I'm trying to help you."

"I don't need help," she said.

"Yeah, right." I rubbed my hands together, and unconsciously started bouncing my right leg up and down. "Look, I'll make this simple." I pointed at my omni-tool. "I checked the Systems Alliance regs, all I have to do is go to the nearest accredited clinic, say that I think you have a problem, and you'll have to report to them."

Oh, that caught her attention. _Really_ caught her attention. For a moment, I had no idea how she was going to react, which immediately put me on edge. She looked so surprised. But that was gone quickly, replace by real, tangible anger.

"Roy! Just who the hell do you think you are? I don't have a problem! And I sure as hell don't need you sticking your nose where you've got no business doing so!"

"You can come with me, or I'll go alone," I said, ignoring her outburst. It wasn't easy, but I had had practice. "It's up to you."

I stood up, and her anger melted away in an instant. It was replaced by fear.

"Wait, wait," Marie said. "Okay. Maybe... Let's say you're right, okay? Just... Just hear me out." She waved at me to sit down, and reluctantly I complied. She rubbed her forehead with both hands, thinking. "I've just been having a bit of trouble. After Mindoir I mean. It's just... I just need a little time. That's all, just a little time. I'll be fine."

"Marie, you're an _alcoholic!_ You can't just have a drink and get over it. You need help, not to simply be left alone."

"Roy..."

"No. I know I'm right. You told me you've had help like that before, right? It's not the first time."

She looked away, and didn't say a word.

"Come on. Marie," I called her, and she finally looked up. "Let's go. I'll go with you."

"I can't. I can't! If I go there again..." a few tears ran down her face, which only served to piss me off even more. I knew they were fake. They were always fake. But I kept it all down. "It'll be on my record. Again. I can't go there. Please..."

"No deal."

Marie sniffed. "O-Okay. I'll go first thing tomorrow, okay? I have to-"

"No. We go _right now_."

"What? Right now? I have- I can't just drop everything and leave!"

"Well," I said, standing up. "I'm going. Either you come with me, or I go by myself."

By the look on her face, I knew she realized I was serious. And that she really had no other options. As I had expected, the tears stopped, her face turned to a snarl of anger. And even though I expected it, it was still disturbing to see the mask drop like that.

"Well, fuck you!" she shouted, jumping to her feet. "I can't believe you're doing this to me! After I helped you, everything I did for you!"

She started pacing, ranting as she did. She stopped in front of the open cabinet, and grabbed one of the empty bottles. As soon as she turned to me, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I knew what was coming even before _she_ did.

The bottle flew off her hand, and passed right above me as I ducked. It crashed on the wall behind me, exploding into a thousand pieces.

When I straightened up again, I saw she was looking right at me, and she looked... odd. Like she had no idea what had happened.

Without another word, I turned and walked off the apartment.

"Roy! Wait!" she called, rushing after me. I didn't stop, so she ran up to my side. "I'm sorry! Stop please! I'm so sorry! I don't know what happened!"

"I do," I replied dryly. I stopped long enough to look at her. "Are you coming or not? Last chance to do it yourself."

She hesitated. She looked down and, after a few, long seconds, she nodded, putting her arms around her chest, as if trying to hug herself.

"Let's go."

"Okay."

We went back only to close the door to her apartment, and then made the walk of shame together, towards the rehab centre in the nearby clinic. I had done my research, and knew exactly where I was supposed to go. Marie didn't argue, or ask, or say anything at all really. After a twenty minute walk we were there. I walked in with her, stood by her side as she talked to the person in reception, and looked at her go when she was invited to come in. She didn't say a word, or even look at me.

When I left the clinic, I headed straight for the gym. I found a punching bag inside, got myself a pair of handwraps, and just banged the hell out of the bag until my hands were bleeding and I couldn't even hold my arms up. And through all the time I was there, nobody said a word to me.

I probably didn't look very approachable.

Once I made it out of the shower, and got some medi-gel on my hands, I checked my omni-tool. There was a message waiting for me. My heard skipped a beat, but then I realized it wasn't from Marie. In fact, I had no idea who it was from, I didn't recognize the name. Anne Warkel.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Mr. Morgan,<em>

_This is a courtesy message to let you know that everything for your procedure is now ready. Please, come to our clinic at your earliest convenience._

_Best regards,_

_Anne Warkel, Wing 2 Fore Clinic._

* * *

><p>"Huh, right," I muttered. "May as well go right now."<p>

* * *

><p>Three days. I was completely knocked out for three days. It had something to do with how they grafted the new lung, a variant of medi-gel held it in place and promoted the regrowth of soft tissue, but had to be done in a very precise manner, which meant no movement at all, not even involuntary. So I was on a respirator, hooked to my left lung only right through my ribs, and with my own unconscious breathing reflex suppressed. I was getting an oxygen-rich mix for it to work, with my entire right side clamped so that the ribs wouldn't move.<p>

It hurt when I finally came to, and there were bruises all over my right side, so I can't imagine what it'd have been like if I had been awake for it.

"Good! You're awake!" a familiar voice with a thick Russian accent called. I was still loopy from the anaesthesia, but already over the _really loopy_ part of it. The part where you just babble incoherently because whatever filter you're supposed to have has been disabled by the drugs.

"Hey Olev. Good morning."

"Hah! How you feel, good? Breathing well?"

"I... ugh, I suppose so. It freaking hurts." I felt over my chest, wincing as I found sensitive spots. When I pulled my shirt up, I saw a line of bruises all along the right side of my sternum.

"Yes, yes. Had to keep you clamped down or you mess my beautiful work!" He waved over the controls on the side of the bed, and started up the scanner. He hummed to himself, looking satisfied. "Take deep breath for me."

I did as instructed, although I had to stop before filling up when my ribs jolted in pain.

"Come on, breath deep, don't be little girl, ah?"

That made me chuckle, which hurt again, but I complied. Other than the rib bruising, it actually felt... kind of good actually.

"See? Breathe better now, ah?"

"Yeah," I said, and exhaled slowly. "Never noticed until now."

"Yes, old lung was a mess. Really not good, where was it treated?"

"Ah, well. When I said treated, I meant a few months of antibiotics and isolation."

"Months?" Olev replied, stopping his scan to look at me.

"Yeah," I said sheepishly, while I cursed internally at my big mouth. "Very backward place really."

Olev shook his head and resumed his work. "Hmph. Did a scan, no infection left. Very strange." The scanner beeped once, and he nodded satisfied. "Good, all grafts took in."

"Great, thanks doc."

"Hah! It's nothing! It's... how you say, easy peas," he said, messing up the phrase. "Now, other thing. Gene mods here ready for you." He pointed at a tray by the bed, where two IV bags filled with amber liquid were waiting. "Now, usually only one at a time, but you are in a hurry. So, will give you both, keep you here for a few hours, and if you not die will send you home."

"Not... die?" I said, and probably turned whiter than my sheets.

"Naaah, only if you are little girl," Olev replied. He hung both bags on the overhead hook, and plugged both drips into a V tube and into my arm. Didn't hurt one bit, very good aim. "Good, now relax, and will be done soon."

"Thanks doc," I said. He left the room, and I grabbed my omni-tool. To my delight, there was a message from Shepard waiting for me.

* * *

><p><em>Roy, I'm here. Flight was okay, and I've met my adoptive family.<em>

* * *

><p>She didn't even sign it, just one line to tell me she was there. Carefully, and annoyed at the needle in my arm, I started typing the reply.<p>

* * *

><p><em>Hey Lana,<em>

_I'm glad to hear you arrived without incident. I'm sorry I didn't reply right away, had a couple of things that kept me out of touch. I also met Marie again, remember her? She's here on shore leave, asked about all of you._

_How is Eden Prime? I heard it's like a paradise, but then again, people have very strange ideas about what paradise's supposed to look like. _Boring_ is more like it, am I right or what?_

_What about the family, are they okay? I know, you just got there, but first impressions are important! I have no idea what Eden Prime is like, so you'll have to let me know all about it._

_I'm currently sitting in the hospital getting my gene mod treatment. After this, a little more than a week and I'm off to bootcamp. I hope I can make it through, because otherwise it's going to be expensive, they're supposed to refund me for the gene mods._

_Anyway, other than that, not much to report from the Arcturus front. You take care and keep in touch, okay?_

_Roy._

* * *

><p>It only took about twenty minutes for the drips to finish getting all the weird stuff in my system. I did a little bit of extranet research while I waited. Turns out the gene mods were a collection of custom-made retroviruses designed for multiple, specific tissues, which used my liver as the target tissue for amplification (since liver tissue can regenerate quite well). They'd eventually stop when my white blood cells developed antibodies against the specific antigens introduced in the retroviruses as a "stop flag" of sorts. It was all terribly interesting, but it also meant that my liver was about to be hammered by a whole lot of viruses.<p>

Which had the unfortunate side effect of making me so _incredibly _sick I thought I was going to turn inside out. I think I puked out my very first meal. Heck, I swallowed a dime when I was a kid, and three dollars came out.

"God dammit," I muttered as the nurse helped me lay back down comfortably once more. I was drenched in sweat, and was desperately tired.

"You're doing quite well," the nurse said. "You've gone through the worst of it already."

"I am suddenly having second thoughts about the wisdom of my career choice," I said, putting as much mock verbiage out as I could, which got the nurse to laugh at least.

"You'll be fine," she replied. "You're not a little girl, are you?"

"_Et tu, Brutus?_" I said, and she laughed again.

"The acute response is very uncomfortable, you'll be better in the next few days."

"I sure hope so, or bootcamp is going to suck..."

She handed me a glass of lemon and ginger tea, and left me with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. My stomach was still cramping, but a few sips of the tea did seem to help me settle down. With a deep breath, I laid back and closed my eyes.

_I really hope these things work._

The nurse turned out to be right. Two hours later I was out of the hospital, still feeling sick but not too badly, and with instructions to come back if I was still feeling down in five days.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Lana,<em>

_Thanks for the pictures! It seems like a nice enough place. How are the folks? You mentioned Thomas didn't seem to like you much. Give him a little time, he's probably feeling a bit intimidated by suddenly having a cool big sister like you. He'll have no choice, there's no way he can stay mad at you._

_I also got a letter from Joe's parents. I mentioned that you've gone to Eden Prime, and turns out they have some family there, so there's a good chance you'll have a chance to meet them the next time they go over. Apparently they have a huge piece of land, should be good fun, right?_

_Anyway, first day of bootcamp today. And I finally found out why they call the first week the _meatgrinder_. For those of us who don't pass the fitness tests, which is pretty much everyone who didn't have the gene mods early and trained for it, we have a special training regime. They work us to the bone the whole freaking day, pushing with stims and whatnot, and then at night they fix us with muscle weave, medi-gel, and everything else they have. And in the morning, we'll get to do it all over again._

_Whee._

_Sounds bad, but what's funny is that it's pretty much like spending the night in a haunted house. Check the recording I made, this is what I'm hearing right now from bed._

_Take care,_

_Roy._

* * *

><p>Shepard was sitting on the bed across the mattress, her feet poking off the side bouncing up and down. She swiped over the omni-tool to open the attached audio file, and listened. At first it sounded like the sounds of barn animals, then she realized it was a whole collection of groans, moans, and curses, coming from a whole lot of people in pain.<p>

She chuckled. Roy was right, it did sound like a haunted house.

"Lana dear, will you come down for breakfast?" a feminine voice called.

"Coming," Shepard replied with a sigh. She closed the omni-tool, and walked off her room and down the stairs, her steps on the hardwood floor echoing through the large chambers.

Once she got to the kitchen, she was greeted by the sight of Thomas sitting at the table with a sullen face, and looking at the empty plate in front of him. His curly brown hair was as messy as ever, and his pale face was scrunched in annoyance. The owner of the other voice was in front of the stove, pouring a pre-made pancake mix on a pan and flipping the results on a plate. She had the same brown hair Thomas had, only longer, and neatly kept in place with several hairpins; the same pale skin; she had a long, pointy nose, and a wide mouth with full lips, which seemed permanently curled down in disapproval.

"Hey T," Shepard said in a low voice. "Good morning. You okay?"

"Fine," he snapped.

"Thomas!" the woman shouted. Thomas didn't look up, but winced at the response.

"Carol, it's okay," Shepard said. "I..." She stopped talking when Carol turned to look at her, with a sad, wounded expression on her face. Shepard winced internally, not giving her the satisfaction of seeing her squirm.

"Lana dear, I told you, you can call me _mom_."

"I don't think I can," Shepard muttered.

Carol sighed, turning back to the pancakes, and getting the last one out of the pan. Shepard took the chance to look at Thomas, and forced a smile out. "It's fine," she whispered. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing," Thomas muttered.

"Okay," Shepard replied, trying for another smile.

"Thomas," Carol chided as she got to the table, putting the plate of pancakes on it and sitting down. "Come now, stop being like that. Don't you like pancakes? I just made them for you, you know." She made a very obvious and elaborate sigh. "Why are you always like this? I'm trying! I'm trying so hard, and- Thomas! Where are you going?"

The boy jumped back and ran off, ignoring the pleas from Carol for him to stop. Without a second thought, Shepard jumped back and went after the boy.

"Lana! Oh, why is it like this?" Carol lamented.

Shepard felt horrible about it, because they had offered a roof, and a home, but she really hated that woman. She had this _constant_ need for drama, everything Thomas did, everything _she _did, everything seemed to be just the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She went from shouting at them, specially at Thomas, to just whine and moan about everything that was out to get her. And after chewing Thomas up all morning for... she didn't even know what _for_, that's how unimportant it was, it was all supposed to be fine and dandy because she had made pancakes.

Then there was Edgar, who was just so inaccessible. Just worked long hours, and seemed to want to hear absolutely nothing about anything when he came home.

She could feel the frustration oozing out of every one of the boy's pores. He was high-strung all the time, and had yet to say six words in a row to her. At least she was getting _something_ now. Worst of all, Roy had been no help at all. She had asked, and all she had gotten back were vague reassurances that Thomas would surely come around eventually.

Damn but he was useless. She wondered if Roy had felt the same when he came to visit them every day back in Arcturus station, five... _four_ sullen and quiet kids who didn't want to talk to him, or anyone else. But he kept trying. He was always there. She hadn't even realized how much she had come to expect it until she had shipped out to Eden Prime.

"Thomas," Shepard called, knocking softly on the door to his room.

"Leave me alone," he replied.

She knew the door wasn't locked. None of the doors in the house had locks. There was absolutely no expectation of privacy anywhere inside that building. Yet she didn't open the door, she just waited, listening.

"T," she tried again. "I know how it's like, when you don't want to talk, and everyone keeps bugging you. But it can help." She waited, but heard nothing. "So when you want, just let me know and I'll be right here."

She could hear Carol talking to them from downstairs. Still going on about the same thing, how hard poor her had it with the two of them.

Maybe being quiet and not saying another word wasn't a bad idea after all.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Well, for something new. Expect to see more chapters, or scenes at least, coming from Shepard's point of view. Now, I know it's going to be a challenge, because essentially it'll be Roy doing things thinking something or other, and Shepard reacting to that and not necessarily getting it or the both of them being on the same page. So, little experiment here.

Short chapter, but personally rather "heavy." It's equal parts rooted in experience and wishful thinking, so there you are. As far as Marie goes, if you had the spacer background for Shepard, you find Zabaleta in similar straits during your travels, and Shep has the option of getting him some help. So I took a leaf out of that book, and just amped it up a little. Or a lot.

**Friaku, **thanks! Trying my best here :D

**Mizuki00**, I know, Jasmine. I always feel bad when bad things happen to my characters, so you're not alone there. Once I had a writer's block for a couple of months on a different story, simply because I knew what had to happen to one of the characters and the poor kid just didn't deserve it.

**Sphinxes, **thanks! Yeah, I couldn't let Roy just waltz through Mindoir without any consequences for himself. Shit got bad down there.

**Archer83**, I expect I'll be coming back to Mindoir several times in the future of the fic. I always thought the reaction of the Alliance to the raid was a little underwhelming, as they really didn't get moving until Elysium, but then again, after Mass Effect 2, where they seem to simply shrug at disappearing colonies, it wasn't half as bad in comparison. And thanks! :D

So, short chapter this time, moving things along a little faster, and an experimental change of PoV. Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading/reviewing/following/favouriting/link-clicking! :D


	7. Chapter 7

_Hi Roy._

_That's actually quite funny! I thought I was hearing barn animals at first, then I realized it was all the groans from the people going through your training, haa! It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, back then you... Well yeah, if you can carry me like that, I bet you can do all your work no problem!_

_Anyways, school's starting today, so yeah. I'll keep it short, if they end up having to wait for me I won't hear the end of it. I'm getting used to the timetable here, don't worry._

_I was going to ask. I mean, back at the station. When you came in to talk to us and we didn't talk. How did you manage? And don't say patience, I can't make that work._

_I have to go. Be careful._

_Lana._

* * *

><p>I read the message a few times, a little bit confused. It was all disjointed. And the question at the end? Yeah. How did I manage? And patience doesn't count? Manage what, to get her to talk? That was mostly her.<p>

Unfortunately, I had to leave it all to think about it later, because it was five and we had to get up. I was up earlier, but now that everyone was stirring, it was time to get my ass out of bed. I was barely up when the shout ripped through the barracks.

"Attention!"

We all shot to our feet, ramrod straight. To my surprise, the drill sergeant was making a beeline for me, and he looked _pissed_.

Good times. I was so green I hadn't realized yet that the drill sergeant was _always_ pissed.

"Mindoir!" he shouted. My nickname, how lovely.

"Sir!"

"Lights off means lights off! No talking, writing, or fucking around with your omni-tool! Now get on your face and give me twenty-five!"

_Wait, what? Goddammit, what's the bloody point? It was like five-_

"What are you waiting for? Make that fifty!"

_Shit!_

"Sir yes sir!" I said, and got on my face. I swear, I had made more push-ups in my first two days than the rest of my life put together. Now the day had barely started and I was already at fifty.

That, of course, didn't mean I had more time to get ready. I pushed the fifty as fast as I could, which turned out to be surprisingly fast. The drill sergeant had told us that they were going to _break_ us in order to _make _us into soldiers, but I hadn't realized it was going to work this fast. Miracles of medical science, ripping us apart and fixing us overnight apparently kickstarted the benefits of the gene mods.

Remember how I mentioned I was so green I needed mowing? Yeah, at that time I though that things were going to get easier and easier as the mods kicked in. I didn't think that the military had a _lot _of experience with the mods. And that they fully intended to make good on their promise to break me first.

How adorably innocent of me. Good times.

"All right, listen up!" the sergeant shouted at the line-up. We were all standing in front of our bunks, with a new pile of crap in front of us. "This!" he shouted again, raising a piece from one of the piles. "This is your _training _suit. You will put it on as soon as you're up, you'll only take it down ten minutes before lights out, you will take care of it better than your own mothers took care of you, and you will only be allowed into my beloved corps when you manage to defeat it! Is that clear?!"

"Sir yes sir!" we all piped up.

"Get to it!"

And so we did. The sergeant was yelling instructions and we followed best we could. As it was the case with everything, the regs _were _available to learn later – if we survived the sergeant after we screwed up the first time, that is – but we didn't have time for it. Undermesh, pieces starting with the chest, the whole lot. They were not too dissimilar to regular body armor, and as luck would have it, I _had _been looking things up before shipping out, how guns and shields and armor worked, the whole shebang. So I was done quite a bit faster than most of the rest.

Still not fast enough to be in regulation time. Which meant pushups.

Anyway.

With the extra time, once I was done with the pushups – which hurt like hell, I swear the armor kept getting heavier and heavier as I worked through them – I did a quick check of the regs.

_Son of a b-_

"Move it!" the sergeant shouted, and without even having to think about it, we were off like a flash.

I was right, the armor _did _get heavier. The training armor set was designed to have variable weight. How? Eezo. It would increase or decrease its mass, according to the drill sergeant's commands, and even "use" the purposely-built training facilities for even higher mass increases.

Yeah, awesome tech, but I wasn't seeing the upside. Like, at all.

We started the day with some light running. Light for wartime standards at least. Fifteen miles at full tilt without even the benefit of stims. At least we got breakfast, or what passed for it during training. Vat-grown fake meat and... _stuff_, which we had like ten minutes to gulp down before being kicked out of the mess hall.

All under the smug and amused looks of all the recruits that did pass the fitness tests.

Well, at least it wasn't pot noodles. And ten minutes was twice as much as I needed to consume a couple thousand calories of vat-processed concentrated slop, no problem. I had had a lot of training on eating fast – not necessarily a lot, but fast.

I had plenty of time to think about all that as we ran. It wasn't like I was going to strike conversation with the rest of the recruits or, reapers forbid, the drill sergeant. In fact, I had barely exchanged four words with anyone other than the sergeant. The first two days had been hell on Earth (literally on Earth, as far as I knew Greyhound Camp, where we were, was somewhere near Johannesburg), and the third didn't look much better.

"Look alive!" the sergeant shouted, as soon as we arrived at the station. Every two miles we had a little surprise waiting, and this one was the biggest freaking tyres I had seen in my entire life. "I want these tyres on the other side of the court, groups of six!"

There was this momentary hesitation, which the sergeant didn't miss.

"What's the goddamn problem? You can't count? Move it!"

A few people were already scrambling, but the sergeant's mild reminder really made us _all_ scramble. I found myself pretty alone, but soon found a group and the six of us went for one of the enormous tractor tyres.

"Up, up! Come on!" one of the recruits shouted – not sure who, as we were all in helmets – and up we went.

We tilted the wheel, and one by one we all got underneath to support it. That meant that the last two of us had to do the last bit of lifting, and the thing was heavy as hell. I squatted under the rim, pushed up with arms and legs, and nearly lost the grip due to a sudden and unexpected jolt of extra weight. I managed to recover and put the weight to my shoulder, but I was so preoccupied that I missed it, only noticing how rocky – and heavy – it was.

It was the bloody screams of pain that caught my attention. I struggled under the weight, the wheel moving about and wanting to drop, and as I did, the screams only increased. I couldn't see behind me, so I just concentrated on pushing hard. It took a moment for it to sink in that I was the only one still holding the damn thing up.

"What the FUCK are you-" I started to scream, grunting under the pressure, but I didn't get too far. That's because I heard the familiar outdoors voice of our lovely drill sergeant.

_Right_ behind me.

"What the hell are you idiots doing?!" he said, and not a second later the weight on my shoulder eased up.

Yeah, he was pushing the wheel up like a boss. I was even able to look behind and see him, arms up as if it was a freaking Honda's spare.

"Come on! Get him out of there!" he ordered, and the rest of my group scrambled to complain.

Four of the six, I mean. The _fifth_ had landed under the falling tyre and been crushed from the waist down. I only managed a sneak peek and it didn't look good. As soon as he was pulled away, the recruits were ushered aside by the medics, and I ended up with a lot more important things in my mind. Like the fact that I was holding up a ginormous wheel with my drill sergeant.

"Push on three and jump back," the sergeant said. "One. Two. Three!"

I did as instructed, and jumped back like the thing was on fire. And it didn't even bounce when it hit the ground, it was heavy enough that it just dropped like a rock. That had to be filled with something.

_Fucking hell!_

As soon as I was clear of the tyre, my head cleared with it, and I turned to the four idiots who had dropped the tyre on us.

"What the fuck!" I shouted. "You morons-"

"MINDOIR!"

"What!"

I turned, and realized a second too late that I had shouted at the drill sergeant. And yeah, he looked pissed. And not just because I had shouted at him.

"Who do you think is in charge here? Get on your face and give me fifty!"

_Sigh._

"Sir yes sir!"

Down I went. More pushups. I kind of regretted that I had stopped tracking my total, I could have figured out the day I finally hit a thousand. Probably before the end of the meatgrinder week. Or maybe ten thousand. And I pushed away, I heard the sergeant absolutely chew the four assholes like nothing else. I mean, when I was done with the pushups and he shouted at me to keep running, I was thinking of them as the poor bastards, not the four assholes. Holy crap.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Lana,<em>

_It's finally over. And I survived, too, which is no small feat. Half a dozen people were shipped out crippled that I saw. Probably more. Anyway, passed PFT standards, so I'm properly on my way now._

_Let me tell you, it's not fun at all._

_How is school going? You didn't seem too thrilled about it last time we talked. I wish we could get more than five minutes on the FTL. I know it's easy to say, but try to stay positive. Couple of years and then you're out, off to college or wherever you want. Eyes on the prize, girl._

_It's really hard to tell you anything useful on Thomas, I'm not sure why he's so sullen. As far as I go, back at Arcturus I really didn't do anything special. All I did was wait, it was all you. Not that it was the same for me as it was for you, but we were both on Mindoir at least. We had that in common, right?_

_Dunno, I'm probably rambling._

_Anyway, it's lights out, and they're really serious about that here. Gotta go, take care!_

_Roy.-_

* * *

><p>Shepard woke up with a gasp, bolting up and looking around. Someone was there. <em>Something <em>was there. She back-pedalled on her bed until she hit the wall, breathing hard. The room was completely dark, the low glow from the smallest of Mindoir's moons barely managing to break the gloom. She tried to control her breathing, and her eyes darted around desperately.

Nothing was moving. Not a shadow out of place, not a single sound.

_It's too quiet. It's too damn quiet._

She reached for her omni-tool, but hesitated. The glow would give her away. She had to stay quiet, and listen.

So she did.

When morning came, she was once again sitting down in a corner of her room, her legs against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Reality had finally hit her. She _knew_ it was stupid. She knew she wasn't on Mindoir. She knew that Eden Prime wasn't going to be attacked by aliens out of the blue. It was safe. But she couldn't help it.

Mindoir had been safe, too.

She heard the rest of the house starting to stir, and still didn't move. It all seemed so pointless. Get up, go to school, make a life, what for? For it to be stolen away? Lose it all? She couldn't think of any reason to go through that again.

"Lana? Are you up?" Carol's voice called out loudly.

Shepard didn't answer.

"Lana!"

_What's the point?_

A few minutes later the door to her room opened. Only slightly. A mess of brown curls peeked through, and after a moment of silence, Thomas disappeared again and closed the door. Shepard hadn't even looked at him, she wasn't looking at anything. She heard them argue – or, rather than _them,_ mostly Carol – and finally the noise of the front door slamming closed.

So Edgar had taken Thomas to school.

_Good, maybe they'__ll__ leave __me__ alone __now__._

It wasn't to be. She could hear Carol trashing about outside, until half an hour later, when the door to her room slammed open. Shepard couldn't help wincing at that, then at Carol as she stomped her way to stand in front of her. She had her hands to her hips, and an angry scowl on her face.

"That's it!" she snapped. "You've got to go to school, and I don't care whether you want to go or not!"

_Great, _Shepard thought.

Carol was in one of her moods. Of course, it wasn't like she could predict what would set her off. A couple of weeks ago she'd have thought it had been her refusal to go to school. Now, she didn't know. It could have been anything.

She still tried. There had to be a way. At least figure out how to get Thomas out of the metaphorical firing line. The poor kid always got the worst of her verbal lashings, and she couldn't figure out a way out for him either. Not even getting herself in the way worked.

"Well? What the hell are you waiting for? We've put a roof over your head and food on your belly, the _least _you can do is do as you're told!"

With a weary sigh, Shepard nodded and got up from her corner. She didn't have to say a single word, she knew the sooner she got out, the sooner Carol would shut up. As long as she got her way, her temper would subside.

Unless she got her way _too_ easily.

"You better hurry up," Carol called as Shepard left the house. "And I'll be calling the school to make sure you got there!"

It was hard to resist the temptation to slam the door, but Shepard managed to restrain herself. The more she wound up Carol, the worse Thomas would have it. Instead, she just started the long walk to school. The streets were pretty calm, with most people having already done their commute, and with little reason for anyone else to be outside.

Quiet. Too quiet. Without even thinking about it, her steps sped up, little by little, until she was running. Running along the empty streets, although she didn't really want to arrive to her destination. Just... running. The slowly increasing pain in her legs, the burning in her chest. It felt good. It felt like as long as she felt like that, there was nothing that could touch her.

* * *

><p><em>Hi Roy.<em>

_I'm fine. Really. Stop worrying. I'm just getting used to the new school and all. Not that there is a lot to say. I mean, it's school. I don't see much point to it, I have less than two years and I'm finished with it._

_About your question. No. I have thought about it, I really have. But I don't think it'd be a good idea. I mean, what am I going to say to them? The last thing I can think of they'd want is someone else from Mindoir talking to them. Seriously, think about it, what else are we going to talk about?_

_Sorry, that may be a bit harsh. It's just that we have to deal with it, okay?_

_I still haven't figured out how to get T to talk to me. I'm really about to give up at this rate._

_Well, it's lights out for me too. And it's very strict here too!_

_Good luck with the training__._

_Lana._

* * *

><p>You know, when I joined the army I thought they would be all about routines and whatnot, but my three weeks of training had been, so far, rife with unpleasant surprises. Like getting up and finding out our six-person unit was down to me and Jake. Nice guy, a couple of inches under six feet, light brown eyes and a chiselled face, much as the rest of his body. He was a military brat (his words), and had taken his gene mods as soon as he hit puberty, so he had had time to work them hard. All six siblings were in the military – and he was the youngest of them.<p>

But first things first, tidy up the bunk.

"Where's the rest?" I said, stopping long enough to glance at Jake.

"Not a clue. Not surprised Evan ain't here, but the rest?"

Ah yeah. That had been nasty. _Little_ accident during one of our cross-country runs, a bad fall had splintered his shinbone, and taken the knee with it. Multiple open fracture that bled _quite_ spectacularly. I figured future tech medicine would have him up and running in no time, but he was nowhere to be seen. For what I could see, the rest of our unit was gone too.

A shower and shave later, we made our way to the mess hall, and ate our breakfast, both of us keeping an eye out for the rest of the squad. Not a peep, not even from the drill sergeant.

By the time we made it to the course we had stopped thinking about it. One, two, or six, the freaking course was the same. At least the two of us meant we only had to look out for each other, instead of a whole unit of six. Sounds terrible now that I think about it, but half our unit was just wasting everyone's time.

It made me wonder whether they just didn't care about being reimbursed for enough credits to buy a nice property on half of Earth's colonies.

"All right ladies, listen up!" the drill sergeant yelled, as we all stood in place at parade rest. "You've all been taking it too easy on the damn PT, so it's time to see what you lot are really made of. You are going to complete the confidence course again."

With that, he pulled an assault rifle off his back and raised it over his head.

"Today you will tackle the course for the second time, and this time it'll be under live fire. You _will _complete this course, and complete it in a better time than your first try, or so help me I _will _shoot you!"

I was so rooted to the spot that I must have looked like a statue, so much so that Jake gave me an elbow to the kidneys to break me out of the trance.

"Son of a bitch," I muttered. "He's serious."

"IS THAT CLEAR?!" the sergeant yelled.

What do you do when the drill sergeant asks you that? He could be ordering you to strip naked, baste yourself in honey, and jump into a nest of flesh-eating ants, yet as soon as he'd yell that only one phrase would come to mind.

"Sir yes sir!" we all replied.

As luck would have it, Jake and I were at the front. On the word _go_ we both took off like greyhounds chasing after the bone, and we got to the first obstacle in record time. I hadn't even started climbing the rope net when the shooting started.

And then, I have no idea what happened. Last thing I remembered was my heart pumping hard, and a sort of cold dread spreading through my body. I remember pushing hard, and next thing I know, I'm back on Mindoir, with batarians shooting at me as I run for my life. I don't even remember how the transition went.

I didn't even spare a glance behind to see if someone was following me. That was important, I felt like it was important, but I couldn't. Someone called my name, and only made me run faster. Harder.

For what seemed like a few seconds stretched into an eternity I ran as hard as I could. Bullets hit the ground around me, no matter how hard I ran I didn't seem capable of outrunning them. All sorts of weird obstacles seemed to pop out of nowhere. It was when I was crawling under some barbed wire and I got stuck that things came to a head. The shots intensified, and no matter how hard I tried to push, I couldn't break free.

"Mindoir!"

A hand landed on my shoulder, making me jerk to the side to free myself and try to grab it. All I managed was to get even more stuck.

"Get a grip goddamit!"

I looked at the man yelling at me, and realized I knew him.

_Shit._

"Jake?"

"Yeah, who else?" he snapped. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"Sonofabitch..." I muttered.

It had been enough to break out the weird mental shenanigans. It took me a moment to realize where I was, stuck under the barbed wire obstacle after having cleared almost half of the course.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" I replied, trying to shake myself free. Jake pulled me back to undo the snag from the wire, and slapped me on the arm.

"Come on! We ain't done, and we gotta do this together! We're a goddamn team!" he said, and started crawling again.

I followed close, keeping my eyes fixed on him. The gunfire resumed, landing close again, and making me wince. But this time I didn't freak out.

The rest of the course was much less eventful. Other than the freaking weaver, where I damn near broke my ribs due to a slip. And the island hopper, where I faceplanted after a few bullets nailed my shields and pushed me out of balance at the wrong time. Or at the right time, if you're the drill sergeant. I realized as we ran it that Jake was freaking out about being shot at, too. not as much as me perhaps, but he sure was running with a purpose.

As a result of all that, we completed the course in record time for both of us. As we panted our way to the side, making room for newcomers to clear the last obstacle, Jake looked at me and shook his head.

"Since when... Whew! Since when can you run like that?" he said, chucking and panting at the same time.

"I don't like being shot..." I muttered.

At that, Jake stopped walking and just broke out laughing. He winced in pain as he doubled over, still laughing, and struggling to breathe at the same time. When he finally calmed down, wiping tears off his eyes, he slapped me on the back and started laughing again.

"Shit Mindoir, who does?" he said, and gave me a good natured shove out of the way.

Yeah well, I guess he had a point.

* * *

><p><em>Hey Lana,<em>

_Hows things? Let me guess, same old same old, huh? Yeah, I guess you're right, Eden Prime isn't the most happening place in the galaxy. I can totally relate, trust me on that._

_Here things are getting more interesting. Finally finished the first part of training, physical and all. Heck of a month, let me tell you! Not that they're going to stop grinding us down with PT, but at least it should be more manageable from now on. We're starting weapons training and everything that goes with it, I'm looking forward to the change of pace._

_Except for the fact that I've been reassigned _again_. Since it was just Jake and I, they sent us to fill other units with vacancies too. The drill sergeant pointed out that this has been one of the worst crops of recruits he remembers, with people dropping left and right, but I have a feeling he says that to everyone. Anyway, there weren't any units with two vacancies, and the sarge was tired of waiting for one to open up, so he just split us and sent us our separate way. Oh well, we're still on the same platoon._

_And, yeah, I was serious about University. Why not? I heard Shanxi's got a good one, and it could be a good change of pace if you're still not liking Eden Prime by the time you're done with school._

_I'd have done it myself, except that... Well, I just thought I would _feel_ more useful if I joined the army._

_Any news on Thomas? He still giving you a hard time? There's gotta be something he likes you can help him with to get on his good side. Have you talked to Carol or Edgar about it?_

_Okay, lights out time. They really don't leave much time for writing here!_

_Take care!_

_Roy.-_

* * *

><p>It took Shepard a while to realize why she was always looking forward to the messages. It was the little details about the military life. It all looked so... ordered. Whenever Roy complained about the drill sergeant doing this or that, their punishments and whatnot, she <em>could <em>see why they were dished out, what she'd have had to do to avoid them.

She didn't care how bad the punishments were. At least she _knew_ what they were for.

"Come on Thomas, we have to go!" Carol called.

Shepard closed her omni-tool in an instant, by reflex. She felt a little silly, but she didn't want to think what would happen if Carol discovered her messages. It was mostly Roy, and a few of her classmates, but that was it. In truth, she didn't respond as much as everyone seemed to message her.

That made her feel a little bad. Specially in Roy's case, she liked his messages, and yet she always kept her replies short and...

_No, no, don't. He's got enough to worry about._

"I can't find my shoes!" Thomas' answer came from upstairs.

"Well hurry up!"

Shepard stood, and the moment she did, Carol turned to her and nailed to her spot with a single glare.

"I was just going to help him..."

"No you don't. He's got to take care of his things," Carol replied, finality in her voice. She didn't yell, or snap, but Shepard knew that tone. She was skirting dangerous territory.

She looked at Edgar, but all he got over his moustache was a glance from his deep-set eyes. He then looked away, and kept pacing, the keys of their transport tingling in his hands. He never said anything in those situations, never defended her, or worse still, his son. He always looked to be in a bad mood, bottled up so tight that he may pop and explode.

Or maybe that was Carol spilling over.

"I can't find them!" Thomas yelled. "Can I put something else on?"

"Thomas Edgar Mathias!" Carol yelled, making Shepard wince. Full names meant things were about to get ugly. "You better find your shoes in the next five minutes!"

Very discreetly, Shepard walked back to the living room, and then sneaked out the back door. She knew the shoes Thomas was looking for, and she remembered having seen them a few days before.

It didn't occur to her at the time just how incredibly overdramatic the whole situation was. Carol was teetering at the edge of one of her meltdowns over a pair of shoes. _Shoes_.

She hurried up as she heard Carol getting more and more impatient. She felt like she was trying to defuse a bomb as a clock ticked down to total destruction.

"YES!" she finally shouted.

There they were, in the laundry room. Cleaned and shiny. She grabbed them, and rushed out of the room, going straight towards the stairs.

"Lana!" Carol called.

"I found them!" she replied, undeterred. Her voice summoned Thomas, who ran out of his room to stop at the handrail on the top floor.

"I told you not to look for them!" Carol snapped, gesturing towards Thomas. "It's Thomas' responsibility to take care of his things!"

Looking at Thomas' face, Shepard felt a surge of anger in her. The constant barrage that Carol was throwing at him, and the way he always reacted, almost as if he was physically punched, it wore on Shepard's patience. She found herself wanting to confront Carol right then and there.

"He was looking upstairs! How was he going to find them?" Shepard shook the shoes in front of Carol's face. "They were in the laundry!"

"Don't take that tone with me, young lady!" Carol replied, raising her hand and wagging her finger at her. "You have to show us some respect."

_Us? Is she really throwing Edgar in this? He doesn't care!  
><em>

"And what about Thomas?" Shepard retorted, still not fazed. "You-"

Her tirade was interrupted by the sudden sound of footsteps, and a door slam. Thomas had, apparently, decided he wasn't going to be caught in the middle of that and beat a hasty retreat.

"Thomas!" both Carol and Shepard called at the same time.

Shepard turned to look at Carol with such a shock on her face that it spilled over to the woman, making her give Shepard a surprised look back. The exchange of looks only lasted a moment, with Carol being the first one to speak.

"Fine, it's fine. If that's how you want to be, that's fine," she said, and as she spoke, she put such overdone defeat in her voice, it made the hair on the back of Shepard's hair stand up. She could never get used to how quickly Carol swapped her moods around.

But this time there was something else. She felt annoyed. Not angry, but annoyed. Usually she'd be trying to figure out how to placate her, but this time she just looked at her, almost daring her to go on.

Deep down, she felt it was incredibly _unfair_. To Thomas. But what shocked her the most was how _both_ of them had called the boy at the same time. WAs she turning into Carol? She?

"Let's go Edgar, they can stay here if that's what they want," Carol said, and turned around with a sigh.

"But Carol..." Edgar said, only to be silenced by a glare from his wife.

Shepard didn't say a word. She looked at them go, not looking away even when Edgar turned to look at her one last time before leaving and closing the door.

_Good riddance._

After that, she stalked up the stairs, and walked up to Thomas' room. The door was closed, again.

"T," she called, knocking on the door. "It's okay, they've gone by themselves." There was no answer, so this time, she insisted. "I'm coming in, okay?"

"Leave me alone!" Thomas shouted as Shepard walked in. He was on his bed, curled up in a way that reminded Shepard a little too much of herself. "Why do you always do that?"

"I... I was just trying to help you. It's not fair that-"

"Don't help me!" he snapped. "You..."

Whatever he was going to say, he seemed to think better of it, and he simply clammed up, looking away and retreating back on his bed. Shocked as she was by the sudden outburst, she took a step towards Thomas, and the boy immediately made a show of turning even further away.

She didn't know what to do. The uncomfortable silence stretched, all while one thought seemed to dominate her mind.

_I just can't do anything right..._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> So, at first I figured I'd do a bit of time skip ahead to get to some later events, but after I wrote that, I thought I was lacking in context, so I had to go back and write... This chapter.

I hope it wasn't too confusing. It's essentially a collection of e-mails and scenes to change a "Four weeks later..." timeskip into a montage of things happening over four weeks. The idea was not to show everything, but rather show enough that will let you, dear reader, fill in the gaps :)

Next time, more happenings, and probably a more "traditional" chapter!

**And of course, thanks a lot for all the _reviews_! And follows and favourites, woot! And hit over 100 followers!  
><strong>

**SeregaKR**, I'll be honest, I asked a Russian colleague of mine to come up with a common name for a Russian, but I didn't ask him how to write it, so you're probably right :D I'm leaving the gaffe in so that future reads can come here and see how I screwed up, hehe.

**CamFou182**, if anything, Roy'll probably want to stop those things from happening. But if they do, expect him to be involved somehow. I mean, if you know a group of soldiers will die in an ambush from Cerberus, you'd want to do something too I bet.

**Archer83, **for now Roy needs to get himself up to speed, which is going to be a heck of a kick in the nuts for him. You haven't seen anything yet! :D

**Mizuki00**, yeah, missing Zabaleta happened a lot, not sure why Bioware didn't make him easier to trigger, like all the people they put right in front of the Normandy. Unfortunately, things aren't exactly looking up for Shep quite yet.

In conclusion, bit of an experiment this time. Hope you enjoyed it! And stay tuned for more happenings in the messed-up timeline that is Mass Effect: Divergence!


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